Modern manners
How many asexuals are there?
No sex, please Several friends of the late Sir Edward Heath asserted that he could not be guilty of sexually…
Not just a fad: the dangerous reality of 'clean eating'
The ‘clean eating’ revolution is more likely to make you ill than healthy
The uglier the man, the uglier the attitude
The uglier the man, the more he demeans women
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…
I’m 43. Why am I still so reluctant to call myself a man?
I'm 43. Why do I still not refer to myself as a man?
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…
You can do anything (but you shouldn’t): the brave new world of internet morality
Going online does not make you invisible – as the adulterers who used the hacked site Ashley Madison are discovering
Bubble-wrap, berry-picking and the secret pleasures of destruction
The secrets of bubble-wrap and other delicious little sensations
Safety tip: don't try to steal Trev's phone
‘I’ve lost my phone,’ yells Trev. We’re in a club. He’s come charging on to the dance floor to tell…
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,…
Would Betjeman recognise anything about today’s north Cornwall?
In a documentary filmed at the end of his life, Sir John Betjeman, who lived in the village of Trebetherick…
Why sport and sham morality go so well together
Why sport and sham morality go so well together
Customer surveys: just say no
Against the customer service Q&A
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…
2067: the end of British Christianity
England’s churches are in deep trouble
Adultery websites should be as unacceptable as race-hate websites
Why don’t more people object to online promotion of adultery?
An Austenesque Aga saga with hints of postmodernism
Lovely, gentle Isabel, just 40, makes masks. Her husband Dan, erstwhile ‘student of the Classics’ and playwright manqué, is ‘bored…
Why I joined the smiley-face cult
Why my generation has fallen for the smiley-face cult
How to buy a father’s day present (if you must)
No man ever watched a £20 note flutter from an opened Father’s Day card and thought: ‘How disappointing — not enough…
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…
In praise of the pit bull terrier
Last night I saw a woman dancing with a pit bull terrier. It was about 9 p.m. and her curtains…
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…
The wonderful, vanishing world of the handwritten letter
Peter Oborne 4 July 2015 9:00 am
In praise of the old-fashioned letter-writer