My parents gave up on Christmas altogether once I left home for university. They had never been people for celebrations and we were a household like Belfast in the religious sense – my father, the Catholic, went to midnight mass; my mother, Anglican, to the parish church at 8 a.m. I alternated, year by year,
What hope is there for artists following the sale recently of the robot Ai-Da’s portrait of Alan Turing, entitled ‘A.I. God’, for a cool $1 million? Someone has perhaps paid over the odds for a 3D print with a few marks added by a robotic arm and a few more by studio assistants to areas of
‘Life is changed, not ended,’ said the slogan on the lectern as the priest told his flock what to think about a difficult subject, with a reassuring smile. ‘It’s quite a big change,’ I whispered to the builder boyfriend who was staring down at his feet in an attempt to stop the allergic response that
Ouidah, Benin On a free afternoon in Benin, I decide to walk the slave route in Ouidah, the port from which perhaps a million Africans were transported on the Middle Passage to the Americas. Near the old slave market or Place Chacha, named in memory of the slaver Francisco Félix de Souza, about whom Bruce
For as long as we’ve been serving food, we’ve been unable to resist a bit of culinary deception. Making one thing look like another thing – especially if it makes a sweet thing look savoury or vice versa – seems to have universal comedic value. There’s something Willy Wonka-ish about the visual wrong-footing, the surprise
Back in January, I wrote about my new year’s resolution to cut down on my drinking. The thought of total abstinence was too bleak, so my plan was to limit myself to 100 bottles of wine in 2024. Not quite the NHS’s recommended limit of 14 units of alcohol a week – roughly one-and-a-half bottles
It was quite a year for some of the worst of sport – America’s golfers, already among the richest and greediest men on the planet, wanting a massive extra bung to pitch up for the Ryder Cup and, equally noisome, Bill Sweeney, chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, paying himself £1.1 million while announcing
From Tina Brown Q. I have been dogged all my career as ‘the Queen of Buzz’, which makes people assume I love being in the centre of the social scene. Nothing is further from the truth. Though I will always be an action junkie, I am also a bookworm and a misanthrope, and I live
Back to the past: it’s safer there. There is a themed restaurant dedicated to George VI of all people, near Berkeley Square – a sort of Rainforest Café for monarchists who won’t sink to the Tiltyard Café at Hampton Court. I was looking for a restaurant my husband might like – Brexit, meat, maps of
This has been the most fascinating political year I can remember. I have even found myself dreaming about politics – and neither the excitements nor the perils are likely to end any time soon. So it might seem self-indulgent to tear one’s attention away from grog. But we all need distraction, even in the spirit
I have set my husband a Christmas game. He wins a small chocolate sprout each time he spots a word in my list of Twelve Days of Christmas Hates. He does not like chocolate sprouts but Veronica’s children do, so they will be pleased by a goodly heap of them by Boxing Day. 12. Outside
after Harry South’s closing theme to ‘The Sweeney’ It blows through a scrapyard,through unstable towersof Capris, Granadas, Transit vans … through yellow teeth and fingers,a clouded bar’s persiflagethen out onto the street to lift comb-overs, flares,wide lapels, facial hair –a balm for sore ribs, black eyes. In search of a decade’s soulit winds through a
These mornings when he’s not rota’d on picket, he spends the shift he would’ve spent in darkness in the spare room, sawing, painting, making a doll’s house. His wife, in secret moments, sews bits and bobs of fabric into dolls’ dresses: twists of foil are jewellery, pages of old colouring books wallpaper. It’s for their
When we found them under the tree there were twenty-two men all dressed in white, packed in two boxes of rosewood, between ancient and brittle layers of yellow paper. We set them out in classic style, carrying their rigid bodies up and down, up and down, until the light began to fail; one motionless fielder
Late in the evening six months ago, my wife and I were driving back to our hotel in the dark when we came upon what looked like an abandoned service station. Since it was entirely dark, we assumed it was closed. This was annoying as we needed milk and some other groceries and it was
You didn’t want to approach Davy Russell before a race. He spurned selfies with owners and didn’t talk to the lad or lass leading up because he was ‘in the zone’ – his mind focused totally on the race ahead. Yes, in Davy Russell: My Autobiography (Eriu, £20), written with the knowledgeable Donn McClean, we
