Ribaldry

In Competition No. 2995 you were invited to submit ribald limericks as they might have been written by a well-known poet. William Baring-Gould, who wrote a history of the genre, noted that when a limerick appears, sex is not far behind And the writer Norman Douglas considered limericks to be ‘jovial things… a yea-saying to

Ruislip Lido

Most mornings, if I’m not too hung-over, I go for a run around Ruislip Lido — a mile there, through Ruislip Woods, about two miles round the lido and a mile back again. It generally takes me about half an hour. On my way, I see woodpeckers, egrets, sparrowhawks, and the occasional Muntjac deer. It’s

Lloyd Evans

Pleasing pedantry

Christopher Hampton’s 1968 play The Philanthropist examines the romantic travails of Philip, a cerebral university philologist, forced to choose between his unexciting fiancée and a predatory seductress. The play’s opening scene contains one of the most brilliant comic shocks in all drama. And the paradoxes and flashes of Hamptonian wit are an everlasting treat. ‘I’m

Rod Liddle

Ray Davies: Americana

There is some surprise that after all these years Ray Davies has turned his attention to America. He is the most quintessentially English of pop musicians, a witty and acute observer of the British way of life whose best tunes were drawn from music hall and calypso — even while, with his brother Dave, he

Damian Thompson

Mission impossible?

Just before Peter Donohoe played the last of Alexander Scriabin’s ten piano sonatas at the Guildhall’s Milton Court on Sunday, the autograph score of the piece was beamed on to the wall behind him. It was just a glimpse —- but enough to show us that Scriabin had the most beautiful musical calligraphy of any

James Delingpole

The real deal | 27 April 2017

The other day I had a very dispiriting conversation with a TV industry insider. It turns out that everything you see on reality TV is fake. It’s the ‘everything’ part that really bothered me. Obviously, we all sort of know that most TV is faked: that close-ups on wildlife documentaries are sometimes filmed in zoos

Notebook | 27 April 2017

I’m an unashamed Archers fan. But for the first time in 50 years I’m exasperated by the storyline. A fortnight ago Usha, who has no ball sense, is justifiably rejected as a potential player by Ambridge’s cricket captain. Even she admits she’s useless. Nevertheless, bleating ‘sexist’ and ‘age-ist’, she leads a Lysistrata-style boycott, not of

Girl power | 27 April 2017

Lady Macbeth, which has nothing to do with boring old Shakespeare beyond indicating a certain archetype (huge sighs of relief all round), is a British period drama about a young woman who, trapped in a cold, loveless marriage, finds sexual passion elsewhere, and runs with it. And runs with it. And runs with it. And

A square dance in Heaven

It’s 500 years since Martin Luther pinned his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, sparking what would come to be known as the Protestant Reformation. His superficial complaint was against the corrupt practice of indulgences, the Catholic Church teasing money out of the gullible and persuading them that they could

The lords of poverty

 Kenya I met Dr Tom Catena in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains — the site of an African war and famine few have even heard about — in a hospital overflowing with children. I saw bombs had ripped away their arms, flying shrapnel had taken out a baby’s eye, anti-personnel mines had shredded legs to jagged bone

Fallen angel

The Adèsives were out in force at Covent Garden last Monday for the UK première of their hero’s third opera, The Exterminating Angel, unable to contain their rapture until the piece was over, yelling their excitement even at the interval. Thomas Adès’s opera is closely based on Buñuel’s film of 1962, with the text adapted

Revolutionary road

Cairo is deceptively calm, says Egyptian film-maker Mohamed Diab. ‘People were so scared from the fighting in the streets that now all they want is stability at any price,’ he explains. ‘But if you look closely at the situation, it’s worse than it was with Mubarak in charge when it comes to freedom of speech,

Matthew Parris

What would Darwin make of trainspotters?

Why are men so much more likely to be interested in trains than women? I believe this to be a question of profound importance. It has implications for the debate about whether behavioural gender differences are inborn or learned. And implications for our understanding of male thinking. When at a dinner party did you ever

Dominic Green

America’s other civil war

‘What makes the Red Man red?’ the Lost Boys asked in Disney’s Peter Pan (1953). According to Sammy Cahn’s lyric, it was embarrassment: ‘The very first Injun prince/ He kissed a maid and start to blush.’ Redness is everywhere in The Earth is Weeping — in the anger of the Indians, harried and starved into

Fighting talk, but little action

On 11 May 1937, at the Gare St-Lazare in Paris, Ernest Hemingway said goodbye to a friend who was leaving Europe. Like Hemingway, John Dos Passos had been in Spain to support the Republic in its civil war against the fascist Franco. But he became disillusioned when the Soviets (also fighting against Franco) murdered someone

Europe’s best hope

Go into any high street bookshop and find the European history section. There’s usually a shelf or two on France and about the same on Germany, but the difference between these two categories is apparent straight away. The French stuff spans several centuries, whereas German history is confined to just 12 years. Yes, a lifetime

Boxing clever

Thirty years ago, Russell Davies wrote a weekly sporting column in the New Statesman. It proved unsustainable and was soon discontinued, but not before Davies had described a boxer ‘genuflecting through the ropes’ — an image I have coveted ever since. Boxing is ‘a standing challenge to [a writer’s] powers of description’, according to Carlo