New York The acerbic writer Gore Vidal was once asked which period of history he would choose to have lived in. ‘The 17th century with penicillin,’ was his answer. It was a good sound bite but I don’t agree. Just the smells back then would be enough to kill me, and what about the people
The porter rolled me off the trolley and on to the bed, wished me a good day and departed. My previous neighbour in the two-bedded ward — a frail, aloof, slow-moving African man — was gone. In his place was a visibly vigorous man of about my age with a charismatic, masculine face reminiscent of
‘You’ll come back when you’re in enough pain,’ said the osteopath as I walked out of his door. That was two years ago this week, so when I walked back through the door he raised his eyebrows and made a face. I had booked online as I lay shivering in bed with pain. Two years
Kenya The evening before the assault on Addis Ababa, my guide Girmay and I ventured into a complex stuffed with bombs, bullets and missiles that must have been booby-trapped. A few minutes into taking photos, I heard detonations, and a bunker on the hill above us exploded. We dashed away as the rumbles and bangs
After a monumental, liver-challenging but heart-lifting and even tear-inducing 12-hour lunch with Fuzzy, Nigel and co, we’re back with a bang. We drank, we danced and we hiccoughed our happy way home as if Covid and the long, spirit-sapping lockdowns had never happened. And so, jabbed and double-jabbed, drinks in hand, here we are strolling
Meritocracy, a word coined by my father, gets a bad press these days. Two recent books — The Meritocracy Trap (2019) by Daniel Markovits and The Tyranny of Merit (2020) by Michael Sandel — hold it responsible for many of America’s ills, and in some settings saying you believe the most qualified person should get
Q. At a lunch party, I was getting on so well with someone I had not met before. She knew my work (I’m a designer) and loves it — so much so that she suggested I contact friends of hers who own a design company and are looking to fill a post. I told her
It seemed a suitable topic for a bank holiday. We were discussing Haut-Brion, a bank-breaking wine. There is a question that is often asked. Which is the greatest claret, Haut-Brion, Lafite or Latour? I find that easy to answer: the one I have drunk most recently — not that I have tasted nearly enough of
Last week, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer were overhauling their stores. Football clubs were madly overhauling teams and we women were overhauling wardrobes, if you can believe what you read in the papers. There was a clear danger of over overhauling. What do we mean by it? Overhauling implies change. But that sense has
Because we talk we talk about the weather, its predictable mood-swings, good days, off days, days that come at any time of year as if from nowhere – stormy, or so sweet we have to go outside to feel, together, their July-in-April, March-in-May, nostalgic for a world whose atmosphere adapted us as we adapted wheat,
how Peleus won Thetis of the grey mistby clasping her to the couch, and holding onthrough her every changing shape, even the tigress. You gods on Olympus, grant me that peaceonce her shape-shifting is over, and promise meby the Styx, it be over once and for all.
As a wise colleague once said: ‘Yesterday is a great time to buy a computer, because you have already enjoyed it for a day. Alternatively, buy a computer tomorrow. The computer you buy tomorrow will be both faster and cheaper than the computers available now. On no account, however, should you ever buy a computer
