A few weeks after Friedrich Nietzsche bragged to an admirer that he had completed a ruthless attack on our Lord, he collapsed, had convulsions, shouted like a madman and never recovered his faculties again. It was early 1889. He was 44 years old, his books had just begun to be noticed, and he lived for
At the desk I gave my name and showed my Covid vaccination pass and the woman told me to take a seat with the others. I greeted the two elderly couples and the healthy-looking man wearing a three-piece suit and tie and plonked myself down on one of the orange sofas. The tatty oncology department
Someone else with my name is wreaking havoc with my attempts to control the Twitter account I don’t want. Obviously, I haven’t been on Twitter other than to stick my toe in briefly, then pull it back out after realising how very cold it is in there. But I can’t work out how to deactivate
Laikipia Plateau, Kenya Our local chief Panta wore a government-issue khaki uniform with epaulettes, beret and swagger stick. On a pleasant stroll to our farm springs, he observed how plenty of blood had been spilled over this water. We sat on the glassy-smooth black rocks around the water pools and the chief retold for me
Christmas brings out the best and the worst in me. It’s a chance to give in to my inclination to feed all my nearest and dearest at once, and also to show off a bit. I love the prep, from the shopping lists to the veg peeling, and I love the wind-down, from the leftovers
Someone sent me a job advert recently for a Junior Research Fellowship at Queen’s College, Oxford. It states: ‘The Queen’s College embraces diversity and equal opportunity. Applications are particularly welcome from women and black and minority ethnic candidates, who are under-represented in academic posts in Oxford. The more inclusive we are, the better our work
Sport and politics have always been intertwined, but this was the year they became joined at the hip. Yorkshire racism; the growing protests about China’s sportwashing at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022; anger about the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United; and the long-simmering anxiety about the Qatar World Cup. And with it, growing and
From Lady Antonia Fraser Q. I enjoy getting readers’ letters, but there is one category I am at a loss how to deal with. These are from readers who inform me that in another life, another incarnation, they were one of my historical characters, their present lives being generally very different. Most striking was the
The Connaught Hotel’s formal dining room was always, to me, a place of childish myth; more comforting for being mythical. I am certain it is the dining room in Judith Krantz’s novel Princess Daisy, to which a Russian prince takes his daughter in the 1970s. In this tableau you find Robert Maxwell, Margaret Thatcher and
‘Earth has not anything to show more fair.’ One can admire the view from Westminster Bridge and feel near the epicentre of a great civilisation, but still believe that Wordsworth was exaggerating. His line came to mind when I was thinking about Christmases past, two of which I was fortunate enough to spend in the
The newspapers came out on Christmas Day in the middle of the 19th century and listed in columns of small type all the pantomimes for the next day. Among them in 1856 was Paul Pry on Horseback, or, Harlequin and the Magic Horse-shoe, a ‘grand comic equestrian pantomime’. For it was at Astley’s, which presented
The windows of the tight old houses bulge Across the fishhead cobble, a rope that moors The sea to a church with its back to the quay. The sky is stuck fast in the tower tabs. See now the worried wives, thronging and blocking, Peering and peering through swollen glass To watch the catch of
Inevitable autumn after the excesses of summer: the year has simply nothing more to do. But look: the falling of each single leaf is slow and indecisive, hesitant as if (like floating voters) they are not convinced this is a good way to go; the necessary ending of their short aerial adventure – even as
A squeeze-box performs outside: The tinny air is pumpingw Through its half-forgotten song Like a failing heart. The sacred relic’s displayed In its dull crystal and gold For visitors to inspect As they shuffle by. The priests sit behind it, bored. They are no more concerned than Customs officials might be,
Thinking on it now, it was like living at sea beneath the whaleback hills, in those blue acres of lavender. Our house was a barge, its chimneys sharing our dreams with the sky. The barns were islands we would swim to through the fields, beyond the shoreline of the lane. Here, we would laze and
I learned a great deal at university, about half of it from a man called Raymond Foulk. Ray was not Professor Foulk or even Dr Foulk: Ray was a near contemporary — he was in the year below me — but a mature student, then aged about 44. Shortly before he arrived at the beginning
A joyful Saturday at Ascot recently reminded me that when the old Hurst Park Racecourse (near Hampton Court Palace) closed to become a Wates housing estate, the turf was taken to Ascot to form the basis of the jumping track then being established there. It was living beside Hurst Park — where the seven-furlong start
