Etiquette
Dear Mary: why are young women dyeing their hair grey?
Q. I have lunch once a month with an old university friend. Over the years we have both thickened out…
Dear Mary: How can I greet friends without clashing specs?
Q. As an old trout, large in height and breadth, I have taken a leaf out of the documentary Advanced…
Dear Mary: Another way to deal with a maddening blackhead
Q. Might I suggest an alternative solution to E.B. of London’s problem (3 October) about the person sporting a ‘maddening’…
Dear Mary: How can girls avoid freezing in cold marquees?
Q. What do you do when you are so cold at a party that you cannot enjoy it? At a…
Dear Mary: How can I make visiting friends realise it is a burden to take them to see the sights?
Q. I am an impoverished artist living in a famously cheap European city, largely for reasons of economy. I love…
Dear Mary: A horrid woman accused me of hogging a spare train seat
Q. I regularly travel on the Ashford-St Pancras train and usually put my case on the seat next to me…
Dear Mary: how can I resist peer pressure to go nude swimming?
Q. I am going on a late holiday with a group of people who are keen on nude swimming, which…
Dear Mary: How do you persuade your drunk friend to leave a party when the taxi arrives?
Q. How do you persuade someone drunk to leave a party when it doesn’t make sense for them to stay?…
Dear Mary: Is there a tactful way to tell a dear cousin she needs a lump removed from her face?
Q. How can you tactfully tell someone that the large skin tag or blob they have grown in the centre…
Dear Mary: I don’t want perfumed people to hold my baby
Q. Is there a polite way of not letting someone hold your baby? I love giving mine to people to…
Dear Mary: I was at the dinner party when the text came disinviting me
Q. While renting in Rock last week, I ran into an acquaintance who invited me to join her large house…
Dear Mary: Dare I put my wife and three ex-mistresses all at the same table?
Q. I have learned that someone I much admired in youth is about to become single again. I only have…
Dear Mary: How can I flirt on the train when a man who knows my old habits is watching?
Q. Travelling on a train recently I happened to notice two former acquaintances, sitting together and very nearly opposite me,…
Dear Mary: unacceptable behaviour at a book signing
Q. At a recent literary festival I attended a talk with a high-profile octogenarian writer. I had already bought her…
Dear Mary: My husband has shaved his head for a newspaper feature
Q. My partner, a leading political commentator on a national newspaper, recently agreed to shave off his hair at the…
Dear Mary: Should I follow Cilla Black’s lead on disabled loos?
Q. I was at the theatre recently and bumped into a well-known Liverpudlian crooner coming out of the disabled lavatory.…
Dear Mary: What to do when an old friend snubs you
Q. What should I say the next time I run into a woman with whom I was at art school…
Dear Mary: What to do when a dinner guest won’t turn and chat
Q. I felt uncomfortable during a dinner for 20 in a private house. The young man on my left had…
Dear Mary: How can I make my shy friend’s generosity plain?
Q. I have a friend who can be shy and inhibited. Recently, he was invited to stay on a Caribbean…
Dear Mary: How to cope with London Library overcrowding
Q. As a writer I find working at home too distracting. I am a longstanding member of the London Library…
Dear Mary: How to give a dinner party and still get an early night
Q. I socialise in Shropshire every weekend and regularly give dinners which end at 2 a.m., but it’s a different matter…
Does the English language need a Norwegian lesson?
‘Ten Norwegian phrases that don’t exist in English but should,’ said the headline. So I had a little look, as…
Dear Mary: How can I stop friends calling without warning?
Q. I have moved from London to the centre of a historic market town, now becoming famous as a foodie…
Dear Mary: How can I keep my retiring husband out of the house?
Q. For ten years, I have made a reasonable freelance income working from home. During this time my husband has…
The wonderful, vanishing world of the handwritten letter
Peter Oborne 4 July 2015 9:00 am
In praise of the old-fashioned letter-writer