Life

High life

High life | 28 January 2012

Edmund Wilson was America’s premier man of letters (The Wound and the Bow) during the mid years of the 20th century. To the Finland Station and Memoirs of Hecate County are still in print, as are his journals about the Twenties, Thirties and Forties. He was a literary critic par excellence, a friend of both

Low life

Low life | 28 January 2012

We parked the car and spent a carefree hour on the beach, Oscar and I. The beach was a crescent of pebbles three miles long, and we were the only people on it. A recent easterly gale had driven the tide much further up the beach than usual, leaving behind it a pebble ridge, ideal

Real life

Real life | 28 January 2012

The Volvo only went in to have a parking light changed but, of course, it ended up being taken to pieces. Somehow, whilst fitting a bulb and then securing the exhaust pipe, which had come a bit loose, they found a leak from an indeterminate origin. It was probably the gearbox fluid, the mechanic explained.

Wild life

Wild life | 28 January 2012

Wau, South Sudan ‘Let’s visit the brewery,’ said Ken when we reached Wau. We were dusty and parched. It was searing hot. Like a character in Ice Cold in Alex, I saw before me a mirage of the cap popping off a chilled bottle. ‘Yes,’ I croaked. We had driven thousands of kilometres across South

More from life

Status Anxiety | 28 January 2012

Last Sunday, the Observer published a hostile article about the free school being set up in Wandsworth by Katharine Birbalsingh, whom it described as the ‘Tories’ favourite teacher’. As readers may recall, Katharine lost her job as deputy head of the St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell after criticising Labour’s record on education

Spectator Sport

Spectator Sport: While no one was watching…

By chance I was in Abu Dhabi as England’s first Test against Pakistan was getting under way just up the road in the sepulchral wastes of the Dubai Cricket Stadium. What could be nicer, I thought, as I sat in my hotel room, than watch a bit of cricket, and it’s local too. But in

Dear Mary

Dear Mary | 28 January 2012

Q.  How should one discourage a fellow diner from helping himself too greedily from a dish you are enjoying yourself? A writer friend invited me to lunch in the River Room at the Savoy Hotel. The treat was only marred when the pudding course arrived: ‘opalys white chocolate jelly sphere’. This was a thin chocolate

Food

Food: Smart casual

Reviewing the Delaunay is like reviewing Nelson Mandela. You cannot be rude. This restaurant, a new sister for the ­Wolseley, is as Teflon-coated as David Cameron’s head. And it is very similar to the Wolseley, which was also slobberingly reviewed because people think of it as foreign, but good foreign, which means pastries, not immigrants,

Mind your language

Mind your language | 28 January 2012

You (my husband) say farther and I say further. Not only that but we are both sure we’re right. How can this be? To the benighted farther brigade it is obvious. Farther is the comparative of far, so, at least in the literal sense of distance, it is the logical form. Such instincts to tidy