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Why New York loves John Bercow
‘The British political class has offered to the world an astounding spectacle of mendacious, intellectually limited hustlers.’ This is a…
What Sylvia learned at the constipation clinic
‘The whole of my life I’ve had difficulty.’ I heard Sylvia say this through the door, which was slightly ajar.…
My old horse was tough, ferocious and violent – and I loved her as much as she loved me
Under a blood moon, that was how Tara went down in the end. The old chestnut mare sure knew how…
My hero Roger Federer
Asked how he was feeling as he was about to give a speech to a ladies group, Mark Twain, looking…
When a reader invited me to stay with him in Exmoor estate, how could I refuse?
My first night back in Blighty, I sat all evening at the kitchen table drinking wine with a charming, courteous…
Surrey’s Gore-tex-collar crime wave
The frustrating thing about rights is that when you give them to people they don’t cherish and appreciate them. They…
Taki: Should I just move to a cave in France?
Gstaad Do any of you know what cisgender is? I just found out. Cisgender is a term that describes…
Hell — and heaven – on the French Riviera
We drove down from the hills to visit friends of friends with a house by the sea and on the…
Despite me virtually sexting him, my blacksmith is ignoring me — just like all the others before him
Splitting the atom is nothing compared to figuring out how to get hold of your farrier. Why is the farrier…
Why 1919 wasn’t the year it’s cracked up to be
Gstaad The funny thing is that I was at school with a man called Ted Widmer, and I recently read…
I ended New Year’s Eve more sober than I started it
We were eight for dinner on New Year’s Eve: four men and four women with a combined age, I would…
The Kafkaesque nightmare of cancelling my BT broadband
Oh, I suppose I might as well give it a whirl, I thought, as the recorded voice began its dirge:…
In praise of pomposity
Gstaad My annual end-of-year party in the Bagel was a bust. Too many people brought their friends and I ended…
From Baroness Trumpington to bad sex: my Christmas party week
The Airbnb accommodation at Paddington, chez Mohammed, was a fourth-floor room measuring about nine feet by five. As well as…
A festive rapprochement with the ex-builder boyfriend
1 January. Rooms left in house to decorate: 1 (only the attic, therefore doesn’t count).Walls plastered by self with no…
Why I have fallen out of love with Donald Trump
Here we are, 41 years down the road, and I’m once again writing for The Spectator’s Christmas issue. This is…
Why you should never read your own diary
At the turn of the century, I started a diary. I’ve mostly typed it on old typewriters, bashing out a…
How Ebenezer Grayling destroyed the Kite family Christmas
Ebenezer Grayling sat busy in his counting house. It was a cold, bleak day at the Department for Transport. Big…
New York: the fact – and fiction
New York At times I used to think the place was real. The New York of films, that is. The…
We lost our elderly, dementing French charge
I entered the cave house carrying groceries and panting from the climb to find an old hippie woman displaying rugs…
My Christmas tree health-and-safety nightmare
Decorating a tree on the unfinished minstrels’ gallery was an appealing idea if only for the health and safety violations.…
Human evolution: a short essay
This makes Brexit take a back seat: hints of ancient life have appeared on Mars. Carbon building blocks and other…
Only a Leaver would be stupid enough to go to the wrong airport
Three of us on a cold metal bench waiting for the bus. It’s almost dark. Winter arrived yesterday and we…
I was right; the vet was wrong; and the scary sexy dentist sorted out the horses
The horse dentist is handsome, with blond windswept hair and a weather-beaten face. There is something Heathcliffian about him, something…
An extraordinary encounter in a New York taxi
New York If I wrote this in one of those newspaper diaries about metropolitan life, no one would believe…
