Gstaad OK sport fans, have you been enjoying the concentration camp Olympics? I’m sure the Uighurs in the Chinese gulag are riveted, especially watching the downhill, the trouble being that most of the one million Muslim prisoners have been issued with Equatorial Guinea-made TV sets, apparatuses that only show crocodiles swallowing humans. Joe Biden, in
Eighty yards west of the high terrace where I’ve sat for three weeks recuperating is a hospice built for Napoleon’s veterans. Solidly constructed high up in the south-facing cliff-face, it comprises a complex of walkways and balconies interconnected by precipitous staircases. It is easy to imagine the battered survivors of Leipzig and Borodino perched up
After most of Islington moved to Wales, it was foolish of me to think about following. But the need to escape from Surrey becomes ever more pressing by the day, with housing developments, racing cyclists and incompetent dog walkers bearing down on us so hard we cannot bear it much longer. The builder boyfriend has
Malindi, the Indian Ocean When I lived in Jerusalem a long time ago, I often visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the Catholics, the Greeks, the Syrians and Armenians had their separate territories within the sacred complex of Christ’s Calvary, tomb and Resurrection. (The Ethiopian priests were all unfairly banished to the roof.)
Dry January is but a memory and, nearing the end of a demi-sec February fortnight — just a precaution to check that everything is working as it should be — I’m pretty much match fit once again and raring to go. I certainly loved choosing these delectable Yapp Bros wines on your behalf and, with
It’s not every day that a future prime minister offers you a bribe, but that’s what happened to me 38 years ago. I was the editor of Tributary, a satirical magazine at Oxford, and Boris wanted me to pass on the editorship to him. He conveyed through an intermediary that if I did him this
Well, there’s a surprise: Nike have cancelled their sponsorship of the Manchester United and England footballer Mason Greenwood, who is engulfed by a series of very unpleasant allegations involving an 18-year-old girl. There’s a lot that can’t be discussed about this distressing saga but one aspect that’s worth looking at is the fact that Greenwood,
Q. My partner’s work involves him seeing and talking to people all day, every day. I booked us on to a slightly naff though luxurious 12-night cruise in the Med, thinking this would be the perfect antidote since most of the other passengers will be elderly Americans and we would be bound to know no
The centre could not hold, at least for Piggy’s. The drama of being the only greasy spoon in the West End — in Air Street, of all places — was too much, and it swelled, panicked, and fell apart. Yesterday I ate a mean sliver of almost cold bacon inside hard white supermarket bread. The
A policeman sent a colleague who was house-sitting for him a WhatsApp message: ‘Keep the pikeys out.’ He was sacked and last month failed in his appeal. A reader wrote to me saying he came across the word pikeys in the 1970s in Oxfordshire and ‘understood it to mean dishonest low-life characters, though not necessarily
Our honeymoon weaved from Hampton Court to the pavement labyrinth of Chartres, then on to the high hedged puzzle of the Villa Pisani, where he delighted in my wrong-footed confusion. All the while his notebook overflowing with looped alleys, abrupt dead ends, sly, coiling traps. Back home I soon came to feel the practice of
Muscle patterns that show satisfaction or delight as opposed to a disingenuous smirk have been identified by the Laboratory of Human Interaction to provide more information about suicidal patients who want to check themselves out of hospital in order to take their own lives. The best test for a genuine smile is to look
