Gstaad The pastoral heaven of this place can get very dull during the summer months. Green hillsides, neat farmsteads, pleasing breezes, meadows bright with wild flowers amid white-capped mountain peaks; these are no substitute for pretty women or intellectual company. That is the bad news. The good news is that the nouveaux riches and terribly
I was present in the room when Oscar encountered his father for the first time since returning from his fortnight in the south of France. Oscar doesn’t see his father often. I hoped that his father would be pleased to see his son and would kindly ask him how his holiday went. And if, as
When I made a joke about ragwort being like Islamic extremism, I expected someone to write in. I was fully braced for a complaint from a sympathiser of Islamic fundamentalism, saying look here, Missy, comparing our noble struggle to an invasive weed is beyond a joke. However, the modern world has surpassed my expectations and
Having spent most of my life among politicians I guess I have become unaccustomed to candour. The only example I remember was the Danish prime minister I interviewed for CNN before his country’s referendum on joining the euro. ‘Prime Minister, the trouble with referendums is that people often don’t answer the question. They vote on
A few weeks ago I wrote in this space about the case of Elin Ersson. She is the young Swedish woman who caused adulatory headlines around the world when she stood up on an airplane and refused to sit down until an Afghan man was taken off the flight. Not that Ersson is some awful
The allegation by a former senior Vatican diplomat that Pope Francis vigorously covered up sex abuse is looking more credible by the day. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former apostolic nuncio to the United States, says he told Francis in 2013 that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, retired Archbishop of Washington, was a serial abuser of seminarians. The
It’s funny how the new left’s rule against speaking on behalf of groups to which you do not belong never applies to class. If a white man ventures his thoughts on the best way forward for Britain’s black community, he’ll suffer social death by a thousand tweets. Woe betide any bloke who holds forth on
Cassian Harrison, the editor of BBC Four, told the Edinburgh International Television Festival last week that no one wants to watch white men explaining stuff on TV any more. ‘There’s a mode of programming that involves a presenter, usually white, middle-aged and male, standing on a hill and “telling you like it is”,’ he said.
Q. I invited four younger colleagues, all in their mid to late thirties, to go for a meal at a rather special venue. I first invited A and B, who were sitting together at the time, then C and D, who were also sitting together. On the day, A and C arrived, expressing great enthusiasm and
Roy Hattersley once wrote a plangent passage about a painful aspect of the human condition: the short span of animals’ lives. The owner who commits his affections condemns himself to the pain of bereavement. This thought has come to my mind recently. Roxy Beaujolais, that glorious ale-wife, has already been celebrated in this column. Her
‘I want my money back,’ said my husband. ‘This is from the 1880s, not the 1980s.’ He looked up from my copy of Soho in the Eighties by my neighbour at the other end of the mag, Christopher Howse (CSH of Portrait of the Week, who also recalls his drinking days in the Coach and
Is it me, or is business becoming a teeny-weeny bit Stalinist? Common features include 1) Paranoia about political ideology; 2) Snitching; 3) Fatuous targets and metrics; 4) Unquestioning faith in technology; 5) Huge, economically unproductive bureaucracies; 6) Overinvestment in education; 7) Preference for theory over experience; 8) An obsession with rockets. An acquaintance in the
