Although hunt supporters are right to point out that people of all classes hunt, Labour MPs are equally right to see their ban on hunting, now at last being enacted, as a great blow against the upper classes. Very occasionally, you meet an upper-class person who is against hunting, but this is usually because of
Whatever else the re-election of Bush signifies, it was a smack in the face for the intelligentsia. Like a crazed Kappelmeister sitting at a nightmare organ, they pulled out all the stops, from the bourdon in lead to the fiffaro, not excluding the trompeta magna, and what emerged, far from being a thanksgiving gloria in
The postman who calls at 30 Able Road may be a new urban myth but, as myths do, he tells a story. The people at number 30 found that they were getting post for 30 Baker Street, 30 Charlie Avenue, 30 Dog Mews, 30 Easy Street and so on. When they compared notes, they worked
One of the hazards of writing a column about the press is that sooner or later you are bound to be cornered by an editor or journalist whom you have teased. I shall never forget the time I was harangued in the street by the charming wife of my old friend Peter Stothard. Sometimes one
Many of my non-medical friends complain of the pointlessness of their jobs. What they do has no meaning, they say, no intrinsic worth, apart from paying the bills. My friends feel like caged mice which run incessantly inside wheels: an expense of spirit in a waste of effort. ‘At least,’ they say, ‘your job is
Jonathan Dimbleby has been frightening late-night audiences on ITV with a documentary called the New World War. Using interviews with Ethiopean coffee-producers and reels of library footage of hurricanes, Dimbleby explains his thesis: ‘Global terrorism, global poverty and global warming form a toxic trio that promise a catastrophe that will make the horrors of 9/11
