Modern manners
Dear Mary: I had £300 stolen while at a friend’s house. Should I tell them?
Q. Following a small dinner last night in a private house, I got home to find £300 missing from my…
The neo-Marxist takeover of our universities
According to Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, America’s universities have succumbed to ‘safetyism’, whereby students are protected from anything that…
Dear Mary: How can I weed out the party ‘flakes’?
Q. I invited four younger colleagues, all in their mid to late thirties, to go for a meal at a…
How should you deal with a competitive best friend?
Q. Good friends, who moved away from our city suburb a couple of years ago, retain a pied-à-terre the better…
Dear Mary: How do you deal with a monologuing fellow guest on board a yacht?
Q. A long-standing friend has an admirer of some means. He has invited her to borrow his fully staffed and…
Dear Mary: How does a Wimbledon ball girl deal with a disgusting player?
Q. I’ve accepted an invitation to stay in a small house party in France. My host hasn’t mentioned who else…
The #MeToo movement could be the saviour of sex
Sexual intercourse, Philip Larkin famously wrote, began in 1963. And listening to contemporary commentators, you’d think that it came to…
Dear Mary: What is the correct form when you find someone hiding from you in a cupboard?
Q. Is there a tactful way to ask people with whom you’ve been interacting on an almost daily basis over…
Dear Mary: How can I explain the cushion I must take everywhere to sit on?
Q. I have incurable, inoperable back pain that severely hinders my ability to sit and necessitates my taking a cushion…
Dear Mary: At a smart dinner party, is it wrong to ask for the wifi code?
Q. My husband and I are excited to have been invited to dinner by our most important neighbour. However our…
Dear Mary: our son’s future in-laws want to play social oneupmanship with us
Q. We were about to send off to the printers the invitation for our son’s wedding (we agreed to do…
The DPP’s Alison Saunders was never much cop
An interesting development for our police force, then. In future they do not have to believe everything someone tells them,…
How to be a tourist in Europe
Last week, I was in the Florence Baptistery by 8.30 a.m. That used to be early enough to avoid the…
Dear Mary: How do we deal with our host’s sudden, terrifying rages?
Q. Along with five of my favourite people, I’ve been invited again to what should be an idyllic house party…
How Soho became so-so: Kettner’s Townhouse reviewed
Sometimes I fret that Soho House & Co is doing to this column what it does to London. It places…
Can you prove you’re not a racist?
After an essay in this month’s Prospect about literature and freedom of speech, it seems I was cited on Twitter…
How can I avoid power handshakes? They hurt my fragile knuckles
Q. How does one avoid power handshakes? Twenty-five years of wicket-keeping have left me with pathetically fragile knuckles, and each…
Dear Mary: My daughter’s new boyfriend isn’t on Facebook – how do I snoop?
Q. Recently I held a party at which some people were meeting each other for the first time. One social-climbing…
Dear Mary: how can we dissuade friends from visiting when one of us is ill?
Q. Obviously one is delighted to have visits from close friends and family when one’s spouse is ailing, but how…
Dear Mary: How can we get our star friend along to dinner when he’s so busy?
Q. We want to invite a rather exceptional friend to dinner. He lives nearby but he has a top job…
Dear Mary: What do you do when your secretary accuses you of not making a pass?
Q. I am at the age where parts of the body start to go wrong, and I have a minor…
Dear Mary: how do you deal with a daughter who has gone vegan to get attention?
Q. Several friends have reached an age and wealth that means they take unreasonably long holidays or even entire gap…
Mary solves your problem: Is it cultural appropriation for an English person to attend a Burns supper?
Q. Should the lady or the gentleman have the banquette in a restaurant? I’ve been brought up to believe that…
Mary solves your problems: A secret school scrapbook discovered by the housemaster
Q. At my son’s school the boys keep a clandestine leatherbound book known as ‘The Bible’, a sort of Rogues…
Dear Mary solves problems for Vince Cable, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lord Archer and Ruth Davidson
From Sir Vince Cable MP Q. I have an unfulfilled ambition to win a national title for ballroom dancing in…
