During my book party one month ago — rather surprisingly, the thing is selling well — I spotted Ferdinand Mount in the crowd and asked him to meet a friend of mine. Ferdy recognised the name immediately. ‘You brought cheer to the plains of India,’ he told Naresh Kumar, quoting a headline of more than
The lintel across the kitchen doorway comes up to my collarbone so I need to duck as I go through. A grinning toy duckling suspended by its neck from the lintel by a piece of cotton attached to a drawing pin is there to remind me. Usually I stoop just low enough to feel his
I can’t help it. When I look through my front window and see two super-cool-looking young black guys dressed from head to foot in Nike screaming obscenities, it quickens my pulse. I can’t help it. When I look through my front window and see two super-cool- looking young black guys dressed from head to foot
I haven’t yet calculated how much worse off I’ll be as a result of the budget but it’s time to start belt-tightening. My first austerity measure has been to buy a tent. I’ve been invited to speak at a literary festival in Cornwall but the organiser doesn’t consider me important enough to offer me a
Gutsy stayers can thrill with their courage, canny jockeys with well-executed tactical plans. But in any sport there is nothing like the exhilaration of sheer face-whipping, wind-in-the-hair speed. Ask those fans in South Africa who had to sit through the leaden fumbling of the so-called England football team against Slovenia. Not just overhyped, overpaid and
The veteran Himalayan mountaineer (70 next year) and now indefatigable fundraiser for his Nepalese charity, Doug Scott, held a packed audience spellbound at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington last week describing the moment he was swept from west ridge of K2, second only to Everest in height but far more dangerous. ‘I thought, this
Q. Last year we were invited by dear friends to country house opera, which was wonderful except that we discovered afterwards that we were expected to pay for our tickets — over £100 each! I gather this is fairly normal practice. But we dread being re-invited this year. How can I decline without having to
That nice Tristram Hunt, the meteorologist’s son turned MP, was on Newsnight Review and used the word mitigate. That nice Tristram Hunt, the meteorologist’s son turned MP, was on Newsnight Review and used the word mitigate. ‘You mean militate,’ cut in Germaine Greer. And he did. We all commit malapropisms. The brain fumbles for a
