Life

High life

La dolce vita

Rome They changed the name of the most famous city in the world, and renamed the place Valentino, or so it seemed last weekend in the Eternal City. What can I say? I know nothing about fashion, except that I know a beautiful dress when I see one, but I do know a lot about

Low life

Firm friends

The moment the announcer stated that the 9.05 to Newquay was leaving from platform four, virtually the entire crowd on the concourse at Paddington station arose like a Zulu impi and ran towards it. Platoons of young totty, hampered by pink and lilac suitcases as heavy as themselves, screamed with excitement and frustration as they

More from life

Cars for MPs

Is Gordon Brown the first prime minister who can’t drive since, well, since Asquith? Is Gordon Brown the first prime minister who can’t drive since, well, since Asquith? Hard to imagine the 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith mastering a non-synchromesh gearbox. His successor and rival, Lloyd George, was out of office for 23 years

Food

Tomato snobbism

It happened in New York. As I reached for a small basket of ‘heirloom tomatoes, Little Compton Farms’ I felt my lips curling slightly — was it out of pity or contempt? — on account of the poor soul next to me who had merely chosen ‘vine-ripened organic’. It happened in New York. As I

Mind your language

Mind your language | 14 July 2007

‘Darling,’ I asked, ‘In your day did they call them specialities or specialties?’ ‘Darling,’ I asked, ‘In your day did they call them specialities or specialties?’ ‘Do you know,’ replied my husband, ‘I can’t remember.’ So that’s his last useful function gone. I was asking because, in a discussion of hospital posts for young doctors,