The rich are under attack nowadays, never more so than in America, where The Donald continues to trump his critics, amaze and surprise his fans, and drive his haters to paroxysms of sexual fantasy, with Trump as the main actor. National Review, where I got my start 40 years or so ago, devoted a whole
Before we left for Sunday lunch at the Les Deux Garçons restaurant, Aix-en-Provence, I checked the reviews on Tripadvisor. I’m mildly addicted to Tripadvisor restaurant reviews — I enjoy their Pepys-like unselfconsciousness — and never before have I seen opinion so equally divided between praise and censure. According to the dissenters, Les Deux Garçons is
Darcy trod on a screw. Five little words which, if Darcy was anything other than a thoroughbred horse, might signify nothing more dramatic than a rummage through the medicine cabinet and the application of a plaster. But of course Darcy is a thoroughbred horse. And I did end up mothering equine and not human children.
On Monday I went to the newsagent to buy the newspapers and picked up the first issue of a new one calling itself the New Day. This is the creation of the company that publishes the Daily Mirror, and it is, the publishers say, intended to appeal to people who have given up reading newspapers,
Richard Johnson, possibly the nicest man to occupy a saddle and certainly the most modest, once said of his Irish rival Ruby Walsh, ‘Ruby never seems to fight horses. It never looks forced with him, he never throws the kitchen sink. But I do — metal ones and porcelain if necessary.’ There weren’t too many
On Tuesday night I went to a birthday party for my father at the House of Commons. Hosted by the Labour MP Rushanara Ali, it was an enjoyable affair, full of left-wing journalists and maverick social entrepreneurs. I chatted to the Independent’s Andy McSmith, Prospect founder David Goodhart and the newly ennobled Lord Bird of Notting
Two great men have just bowed out from their chosen trades and it is bloody sad. The New Zealand cricket captain Brendon McCullum and the journalist Hugh McIlvanney might not seem to have much in common but they both made the world a better, more joyful place. I sat up until the small hours a
Q. Re. your letter from F.C. about the boyfriend leaving lids off (20 February), I have a similar problem. My husband has developed the habit of leaving all doors, drawers and cupboards open. I don’t want to nag, because he gets ratty when I do. I don’t think I can scatter insects in all the drawers
Pharmacy 2 is the reanimated child of Damien Hirst; it lives inside the Newport Street Gallery in a forsaken patch of Lambeth by the railway arches. This makes it look, inevitably, like the set of The Bill, but with a painting of Damien Hirst on a nearby wall, which would surely confuse the Bill. Pharmacy 1 was,
‘They all laughed at Christopher Columbus,’ sang my husband flatly, ‘when he said the world was round.’ I wasn’t going to tell him yet again that George and Ira Gershwin were wrong and everyone knew the world was round when Columbus set off. But there is a connection between Columbus’s name and the leap in
