Life

High life

Low life

Low life: Staying in Channel 4’s hotel

In the last Channel 4 series of The Hotel, we saw Mark Jenkins, ex-owner of the Grosvenor hotel in Torquay, campaigning to attract more ‘posh people’ to his failing Victorian hotel. He was apprehensive, though, that he might not know how to handle any posh people that were seduced by this and did come. Posh

Real life

Real life: In praise of Balham

As if by magic, a long-lost cousin will every so often appear. They come from the sticks and ask if they can stay in my south London flat. I always say yes, on the basis that I was once taken in by kind people who took pity on a fugitive from Midlands farming country. Jim

More from life

The turf: Robin Oakley’s tips add up to a £300 profit

Talking to a shipboard audience last week about the perils of journalism, I warned that the biggest danger of our trade was making assumptions. I had in mind my favourite story from CNN days of the cameraman who dashed to the local airfield where he had been told a light plane awaited him to take

Margaret Thatcher vs the intelligentsia

On a warm summer evening in 1986, the crème-de-la-crème of London’s literary establishment met at Antonia Fraser’s house in Holland Park to discuss how they could bring about the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. Among their number were Harold Pinter, Ian McEwan, John Mortimer, David Hare, Margaret Drabble, Michael Holroyd, Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie, who

Dear Mary

Dear Mary | 11 April 2013

Q. How to stop parents chatting throughout school chapel services? Your advice to the organist at the leading public school will not work. I know because my son attends just such a school and services like confirmations and carol concerts are recorded. The parents are reminded that this will be happening but it does not

Drink

The grape, the grain and Margaret Thatcher

It is impossible to think about anything else. Her death was more of a shock than a surprise. She had, alas, outlived the quality of life, so the immediate sadness is more appropriate to the human condition than to her own passing. But when such a mighty figure moves on, the world seems diminished. Margaret

Mind your language

Cravat

‘French,’ cried my husband. ‘It’s bloody French.’ We were clicking on a computer screen in response to the dear old Telegraph’s invitation to ‘test out your etymological knowledge’. The little game accompanied news of an exhibition in London called The English Effect, mounted by the British Council. I had already got one of the 20

The Wiki Man