15 January 2005

Gstaad Nothing like the flu to remind one of life’s priorities. It’s health, stupid, with everything else a very distant second. No woman, not even Ashley Judd or Jemima Khan, could get me out of bed and into theirs with a 40

Spending any length of time in South Africa is both an uplifting and sobering experience. Uplifting because for an English visitor the days are an unbroken series of blue skies, the food and the clothes are cheap (by British standards) and of high quality, and the countryside remains wholly breathtaking. But, there are too many

Dear Mary… Q. What should a host do when two sets of guests are at daggers drawn? It was supposed to be a jolly house party last weekend but my sister plus family of four got on very badly with a colleague of my wife’s who had brought his family of four. The atmosphere went

England’s cricketers are up on the High Veldt, not only taking on South Africa in the fourth Test match, but also their own demons as they strive to reinvigorate all the suddenly evaporated boastful optimism about giving the Australians a run for their money in the Ashes contest in the summer. As England fannied and

It might seem a little early to say so, but if there’s one word this year can do without, it is edgy. It has become a cliché and people seem to use it without any discernible meaning. Both characteristics no doubt go together. I was brought up to take edgy as meaning ‘irritable, on edge,