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Feeding the Crocodile

It is a tragedy that the party that has ruined Zimbabwe, led by a man who was one of the chief perpetrators of its misery, has managed by hook or by crook to win a fresh mandate. The narrow margin of 0.8 per cent by which Emmerson Mnangagwa secured his victory in last week’s presidential contest

Wind-up position

 Los Angeles Baseball is the best American sport. It’s great because it’s timeless — it exists in a space beyond time. Unlike other major sports, baseball requires no clock. It’s a ballet of set pieces — at-bats, walks, strikes, balls — and bursts of motion. The grace of a swing, the artistry of a double

Beyond the pale | 9 August 2018

When we first moved to the Languedoc, the less poncey part of the south of France nearly 20 years ago, there were two kinds of rosé. The first, piscine rosé as the French dubbed it, was thin, pale and uninteresting. It was best served in a large glass full of ice cubes, preferably around a

Desperate housewives

Freud famously asked: what do women want? And I think that after two marriages, a dozen long-term relationships and a thousand-and-one dates, I’ve discovered the answer to that great mystery: they want a man with a beautiful house. In my twenties I thought that what women wanted was a man who was funny, intelligent, sensitive

The new narcissism

My friend recently met a man on a dating app and went out for dinner with him. When he arrived, the man announced that he didn’t drink. Nothing unusual about that: plenty of young men are abstemious these days. His next declaration was more surprising: he didn’t eat. Instead, he lived off something called ‘Huel’.

The evil weed

A sea of bright yellow flowers in a sun- drenched meadow… what could be more idyllic? Sadly, all that glisters in the English countryside is most definitely not gold. Ragwort. A few stray stems of this iconic weed growing in a field of grass is enough to draw a stream of expletives from any horse

Porn power

If ever you find yourself bored and with 15 minutes to spare, I recommend looking up Pornhub’s annual report, the closest thing you will get to a statistical breakdown of the planet’s libido. Here you will discover that the average visit to Pornhub lasts nine minutes 59 seconds; that the most popular time to watch

Notes on...

British street names

You know where you are with a British street name. I don’t mean literally. I mean there’s a tacit humility to our islands’ hodonyms: they are short, simple and unpretentious. Not for us the long-winded commemorations of national heroes or local worthies: no Avenue du Révérend Père Corentin Cloarec or Burgemeester Baron van Voerst van