Friendship
Dear Mary: How can I wind up a Zoom call with a chatty friend?
Q. Is there a tactful way to wind up a Zoom call when one of you has more time on…
Dear Mary: How should I handle my bitchy friend’s birthday cards?
Q. Many years ago I was asked to officiate at a funeral for a family I did not know. As…
Barbara Amiel: My memoir has cost me my best friends
The only female writers of importance I have personally met are Margaret Atwood and Joan Didion, both of whom are…
Dear Mary: How can we be sure our host gives us clean sheets?
Q. Some friends persist on displaying our email addresses in large address lists when sending out round robins to all…
The politics of email sign-offs
I think Anne Applebaum is a friend of mine. I certainly hope so, since I have always admired her writing,…
Trick or treat: the pros and cons of being hacked
The pros and cons of being hacked
The intense pleasures of lockdown
I used to live in Mogadishu for months at a time, cooped up in compounds behind fortified walls. Venturing on…
An open letter to the friend who dropped me after Question Time
I’ve put off sending a private email that’s been ready to go for weeks. Then last Sunday, I read Julie…
Dear Mary: As an actor, how do I cope with strangers who think they know me?
Q. I have hired a private room in a restaurant in order to give dinner to a large number of…
The unwritten rules of sending Christmas cards
No one sends Christmas cards any more. Except that I do, and you might, and a few other people do…
Dear Mary: Is it ever acceptable to blow my own trumpet?
Q. A friend of 30 years moved abroad three years ago. He then was diagnosed with throat cancer but mercifully…
My friend’s death taught me what Easter really means
The bravest thing I’ve ever seen was 93-year-old Albert’s decision to die and the days after in which he stuck…
Britain has become a country of braggarts and show-offs
Over the past 20 years, the old British trait of self-deprecation has been killed off. And in its place, boasting…
Letters
Meeting halfway Sir: If our Brexit negotiator David Davis has not read Robert Tombs’s wonderful article ‘Lost in translation’ (21…
Return to the lost city
During a press interview in Bombay about his latest book, the author-narrator of Friend of My Youth feels ‘a surge…
The day I stopped believing in the friendship myth
Should we be surprised that friendship isn’t always mutual? That is one of the findings of a team of researchers…
How the 'dating apocalypse' led me to vajazzle my armpits
Why I went looking for love in the armpits of strange men
Dear Mary: new neighbours want me to provide a ready-made social scene
Q. Former colleagues, with whom I got on very well in the context of the office, are buying a house…
When did we become a nation of police informers?
There’s a danger that in what follows your columnist may seem to be recommending an attitude. Please don’t think that.…
Dear Mary: Learning to love a man who whistles through his nose
Q. What can you do when disorganised friends say they would love to come to a concert with you but…
Jeremy Vine’s diary: Zipcars, hipster milk and the word that means I’m losing an argument
Last Tuesday I tried to sign up to a new life. My wife and I argued, slightly. ‘I don’t think…
A girl, a train and a miniature pistol: how I met the Everly Brothers
I had five decades of delight with the Everly Brothers – and it all began on the Flying Scotsman
The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer - review
Thick, sentimental and with a narrative bestriding four decades, Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings feels above all like a Victorian novel,…
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