They have stepped into the pop-culture spotlight via the HBO hit Succession, a hatchet job on the very rich and powerful produced by the very rich and much more powerful Adam McKay (The Big Short). McKay started off by doing a lot of cheesy comedies, made a large fortune, and then went after Wall Street
Catriona and I were late for lunch at Vernon’s because I couldn’t get out of bed. The four of them — Vernon and the three Ukrainians — were sitting outside drinking in the sun when we walked up the path. The Ukrainians are renting Vernon’s other house. Nina is married to Andrij. Valentyna is Nina’s
The horse lorry arrived and lowered its ramp — and I stood in front of it knowing that my thoroughbred was not going to load. We were already beyond stressed, having been told our lease at the farm was not being renewed, and with the shooting season bearing down on us. In one week the
What is it about retro food? I don’t mean nostalgic food, from school dinner favourites to your grandmother’s signature dishes. I mean food you’ve probably never even tried. Thoroughly old-fashioned dishes that nevertheless light up your culinary imagination — or at least mine. I’m talking devilled eggs. Prawn cocktail. Beef stroganoff. Perhaps it’s because many
I’m sympathetic to Oliver Dowden’s formula for defusing culture-war disputes about statues of controversial historic figures: ‘retain and explain’. That is, don’t pull statues down, but make it clear that their remaining in place doesn’t signify approval of everything the people they represent did. Provide the public with a helpful summary of their lives and
Could rugby union get any better? The entertainment in the Premiership is breathtaking and the overall product as good as any you get in sport. But why is it not more widely loved? If you missed Harlequins’ epic comeback (where have we heard that before?) against Bristol last week, deepest sympathies of course, but do
Q. On a train journey the other day I sat opposite someone I found immensely attractive. We struck up a conversation and talked for 40 minutes until he left the train, a few stops before my own destination. I am 90 per cent sure he returned my feelings, but he was rather a shy man
There is a Batman restaurant in London, or rather there was: Savini at the Criterion on Piccadilly Circus. Savini was a haunted grey Italian restaurant that closed in 2018 and was artistically dependent on salt. It appeared in The Dark Knight, in which Batman, who is Bruce Wayne to everyone but himself (I have a
There’s a rude gesture in Pickwick that I don’t quite understand. Mr Jackson, a young lawyer’s clerk in conversation with Mr Pickwick, ‘applying his left thumb to the tip of his nose, worked a visionary coffee-mill with his right hand, thereby performing a very graceful piece of pantomime (then much in vogue, but now, unhappily,
A loaded presence in a biscuit tin, The rounds of sandwiches they found Were cut and dried as hard as tesserae; Forgotten in the airless wardrobe, play Was innocent. Would they rebel Against the bounds of home? But looking in One day back
I know what Keats was on about with his mists and mellow fruitfulness, but autumn is less of a joy when you daren’t rock up at the local petrol station with a jerry can to fill the mower for fear of being lynched by fuel-hungry vigilantes taking you for a hoarder. For me this time
