Gstaad This is my last week in the Alps and I’m trying to get it all in – skiing, cross-country, kickboxing, even some nature walking along a stream. (I did my last downhill run with Geoffrey Moore, one that ended in a collision with a child at the bottom of the mountain, and I’m thinking
I thought, or anyway hoped, that once I’d finished the chemotherapy I would spring back to vitality. Seven weeks on and I’m still creeping about like a two-toed sloth. Now and then I study my face and head in the bathroom mirror for signs of rejuvenation. The narrow skull now boasts a light covering of
‘This is my father, and his pronoun is he,’ said the builder boyfriend, checking his dad into Accident and Emergency. ‘And how do we address you?’ said the personage at the reception desk. ‘You can address me as they,’ said the builder b, who was happy to go along with the way the hospital wanted
Kenya During Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 I got a close look at Moscow’s troops and their kit. These contractniki were a ragged bunch with rotting teeth, bad boots and homemade tattoos, using weapons and vehicles that seemed like hand-me-downs from a failed state in Africa. I had expected them to be much smarter.
Anthony and Olive Hamilton Russell love The Spectator and we love them. They have hosted more Spectator Winemaker Lunches than any other producer (they’ll be in our boardroom again next week) and it was only the afterglow of the splendidly bibulous Spectator/Hamilton Russell dinner at Tate Britain the night before lockdown that kept me going
I’m currently standing at the top of Brownie Point Mountain, having spent the past two weeks looking after our three sons while Caroline has been sunning herself in Barbados. I’ve been cooking, cleaning, washing – you name it. As if that weren’t heroic enough, I spent the previous week with our 18-year-old daughter in Mexico
If you were one of the sharp-suited head honchos at CVC Capital Partners, the private equity megalith that has ploughed £365 million into the Six Nations, you might be wondering whether you had got your money’s worth. Sure, all the games are sellouts, from the Twickenham all-day piss-up to the gathering of the clans at
Q. Rory Sutherland recently wrote about high-end takeaways (Wiki Man, 19 February). In the last London lockdown, I was fortunate to use the Supper app to try a number of gourmet takeaways from places such as Nobu, Coya Mayfair and Park Chinois, spending up to £100 per head. What surprised me, given that someone had
I was going to be jolly this week, for variety and denial, but I changed my mind. Instead, I wonder if, when Vladimir Putin – insert your own nickname, mine is unprintable – talks about the weakness of western civilisation (I paraphrase) and, therefore, our unwillingness to resist tyranny in the shape of a balding
The most emboldened man on earth must be Vladimir Putin. Everything seems to embolden him. Treating Russia as a pariah state could embolden him, wrote someone in the Telegraph, but Barack Obama’s previous attempts to engage with him had just emboldened him, wrote someone else. Liz Truss on a visit to Kiev last month, insisted
Late winter elbows past in wind and rain while teenage waiters bearing lemonade and shandy take away my mother’s pecked-at Yorkshire pudding. Back behind the bar Michael Jackson blames it on the boogie in the beer-and-whiskey half-dark as we escort her to the car, one at each elbow, each sparrow elbow, as if making
take this moment beside the rapids, where sunlight clips the old weir wall, knowing itself to be only a faint replica of sunlight, not the sort found in other places, like Pisa or Nairobi, but without undue dismay at its shortcomings and invisibly corpsing, here and there, as only the old style comics knew how,
The art is on the floor so technically my feet are art. Watch your — says the curator, too late. I’m rearranging atoms, I’m making something move here, can’t you see? More verve, more discombobulation – more lifelike, don’t you think? The curator doesn’t think. I disentangle. She announces a round of applause for Tim,
