New York ‘What do we do with these men?’ thundered a New York Times headline. It was followed by a frothing-mouthed, overwrought hissy fit worthy of an Oscar in the overacting category. The men in question are the usual suspects: media people and Hollywood types who have been accused by the weaker sex of sexual
‘Slight prick,’ she said. The nurses all say that before they slide the needle in the upstanding vein in the crook of my outstretched arm. The phrase must be in the training manual. The best nurses are professional and business-like as they prod the vein with a forefinger, then push the needle in. It’s nothing
Because my mother is always telling me everything will be all right if I join a tennis club, I’ve joined a tennis club. In fact, I haven’t joined a tennis club so much as joined a group of women with a tennis coach who meet once a week for instruction at a court in Surbiton.
Laikipia, Kenya Neighbours Tom and Jo came by with a bucketful of wild African mushrooms, which they had collected in old cattle bomas on the way to the farm. I asked: ‘How do you know they are not toadstools?’ Tom said you could peel the caps, the gills were dark brown, not white, there was
In a recent blogpost, an American economics professor called Robin Hanson asked why it is that income inequality is regarded as a terrible injustice by liberal progressives, but sex inequality — the fact that attractive people generally have more sex than unattractive people — is thought of by the same people as an unalterable fact
Difficult to know quite what to make of The Hundred, which has the feel of being knocked up on the back of a packet of Senior Service and anyway sounds like a film about a heroic battle rather than the name of a new cricket thrash coming to a Test ground near you sometime in
Q. When buying a present for a friend, I would not dream of glugging from the bottle or helping myself to a chocolate. But when it comes to books, I am guilty of reading the first few pages from curiosity — then sailing on through to the end. I am scrupulous about not leaving dirty
Le Gavroche is named for ‘the urchin’ in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and lives in a basement on Upper Brook Street, Mayfair. It is the most famous French restaurant in London, and the first to win three Michelin stars. It was opened by Albert and Michel Roux in 1967 in Lower Sloane Street, moved in
Fiore de Henriquez, a sculptor, had a wonderfully high-windowed studio at the bottom of Cadogan Square, where I sometimes visited her. She was passionate and outspoken. My husband was of course terrified of her. She did not mind mentioning that she was a hermaphrodite. ‘If God made me hermaphrodite, that is how I stay,’ she
