‘Sexist mores of super-rich hurt us all,’ sobs an American female columnist in the New York Times. I don’t usually follow this kind of drivel — the sexist stuff, I mean — but a familiar name caught my bloodshot eye, so I read further. Apparently the sexist mores of the super-rich were exposed by the
Three miles up the road is a glass-fronted cupboard in a hedge that often contains free-range eggs for sale at £1.20 a half-dozen. It’s a sales point relying on and trusting in other people’s honesty. You slide back the glass, pleased to be living in a still-civilised part of the world, drop your coins in
The man at the next table looked down at my fidgeting spaniel and shook his head. ‘Not trained,’ he said. How rude. There I was, having a quiet drink with my friend at the local pub, when the man at the next table decided to give me some unsolicited advice about how to control my
My irritability grows with age and tends to attach itself to things that surprise even me — for example, to the widely popular sight of people riding horses on country roads. The smug, self-righteous look on their faces makes my blood simmer dangerously. And another thing that particularly grates with me at the moment is
After Ruler Of The World had won the 234th Derby, the owners, the Coolmore team, were asked if it hadn’t been something of a hostage to fortune giving the horse such a name. Drily John Magnier replied, ‘Not really. There have been plenty of bad American presidents.’ Given the struggle between the two top racing
One of the many things I’m grateful to my father for is inventing the word ‘meritocracy’. He coined it in 1958 to describe a society in which social status is determined by ‘merit’, which he defined as a combination of intelligence and effort. As a member of the Labour party, he thought that such a
Q. With just a month to go of training as a primary school teacher, I am relieved and excited to have been offered a job. Now it has been a few weeks since I last spoke to one of my good friends in our PGCE cohort. I have many lively stories to tell of weird
The Macdonalds of Clanranald are one of the oldest families in the world. Their lineage comfortably predates the Scotland of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Descended from the Macdonald Lords of the Isles and sea kings of Dalriada, the Clanranalds emerge from the mists, myths and archaeology of the Dark Ages. But they were guilty of a misjudgment.
Last August President Barack Obama said that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would cross a red line. He repeated the phrase in December: red line. Why should the line be red and what happens if it is crossed? A simple, unhelpful answer is that the metaphor is taken from a safety gauge indicating
No angels listen when you cry out here, but seals rise up to see, and criticize perhaps, as you intone the omega (their favourite vowel) or the medical alpha (sticking your tongue out) for these gods of ocean. Words wouldn’t do. There are no consonants in the mouths of seals. They can appreciate only the
You will be scandalised by the suggestion, of course, especially those of you who spend several hours every week drinking it, reading about it or discussing it. But most wine is actually rubbish. I’ll let you off the hook if you drink wine only with food. But wine drunk on its own is often a
