As I write, the political situation in Britain has many of her citizens bewildered. Despite the staggering deficits and economic shocks, the good people of Britain voted with their hearts, rather than their heads. Not being a medium, I will not try to predict what will happen. My advice to loyal Spectator readers is to
My boy and I have fallen out. It happened like this. He decided to drive his newborn son, his partner and his partner’s three kids up to the Outer Hebrides, where his partner’s mother lives. The mother wanted to see the baby, and my boy and his partner were keen for her to see him.
One of the highlights of the horsey year for me and my equine girlfriends is our expedition to Windsor Great Park for the annual sponsored cross-country ride. And so with no sleep since the election I hauled myself bleary-eyed to the stable yard at 7 a.m. to start scrubbing grass stains. Why on earth did
Rainy Season on the Cattle Stock Route From the side of the track, a Samburu youth waved me down. I stopped the vehicle. He was gorgeously dressed for market day: all feathers, beads, disks of aluminium, with ochre on his head and bare shoulders. He wore in his beaded belt a stabbing sword in a
Over the past five weeks I have often found myself cursing the British public. I cursed them when Labour’s support started climbing in the opinion polls, grumbling about how some people didn’t deserve to vote. I cursed them when they flocked to the Lib Dem banner following Nick Clegg’s performance in the first debate, complaining
It was to have been Ascot on Saturday. But alternative political duties for CNN intervened. ‘OK,’ said the little green man descending from his flying saucer in Parliament Square, ‘I appreciate that “Take me to your Leader” won’t do right now. But when can you take me to your Leader?’ I had been musing at
The last Wednesday in May will never be the same. What always used to be an annual highlight, the European Cup, now Champions League Final, has been brought forward to the weekend before — on the say-so of ever-tinkering Uefa chief Michel Platini so that more children, who won’t have to go to school the
Q. I am of an age when I’m invited to coming-of-age parties for my friends’ children. As several of them are well-heeled and the children over-indulged, it has become customary to buy very lavish gifts, which I find ostentatious and can ill afford. I like attending these functions, and relish the opportunity to catch up
‘You can do a lot of things at the seaside that you can’t do in town,’ sang my husband in a gurgling tone produced by a recent pull at his whisky glass. ‘You can do a lot of things at the seaside that you can’t do in town,’ sang my husband in a gurgling tone
