If you would like to see the kind of out-at-elbow tweed jackets once beloved of schoolmasters before they discovered the joys of earrings and the like, and still by far my preferred apparel, you must go to provincial book fairs. They are smaller and less frequented than they used to be. It is a strange
Philadelphia got a new mayor in January and most residents couldn’t be happier. After being sworn in, Michael Nutter gave a rousing speech about all the great things he planned for the city: less crime, better schools, more jobs. ‘People who have confidence in the future make big plans,’ Nutter declared. ‘This is the new
Jonathan Davis talks to globetrotting investment guru Jim Rogers about the bull market in commodities, China’s rise to superpower status — and how America lost the plot ‘What do they know of England who only England know?’ Kipling’s question, with its powerful message that true knowledge of a locality can only come with the perspective
Christopher Fildes on the business dealings at Newbury Forget Cheltenham. That was just a warm-up. The big meeting next week is at Newbury, and it will have everything — fierce contests and driving finishes and bitter objections and stewards’ inquiries and prize-money running well into eight figures — everything, that is, except horses. Trooping into Newbury
The Letters of Lytton Strachey, which I have just been reading, are a mixed joy. Odd that a writer supposedly so fastidious in the use of words should have produced effusions in the 1920s using ‘divine’ or ‘divinely’ half a dozen times in a single letter, just like a Bright Young Person from Vile Bodies.
Elliot Wilson explores how investors can back ventures that lend to the world’s poorest entrepreneurs Prathminda Kaur is the modern version of the Little Match Girl, only with a twist: instead of perishing in a Victorian winter, she’s making a nice living for herself selling red onions and bell peppers in a Mumbai market. Kaur
If you think pensions are boring, how exciting do you think poverty in old age will be? I only ask because conventional attitudes to this problematic topic are not just dangerous but also out of date. Most people know that failing to save will not prevent them growing old. Fewer realise how recent rule changes
Neil Collins has become addicted to alphaville’s interactive forum for stock-market watchers There are thousands of websites for anyone interested in markets. You can spend whole days shunting from one to another, blitzed by irritating ads, looking at share prices anywhere in the world, reading opinions expert and stupid, blud-geoned by analysis. Where on earth
Grouse shooting and grouse moors have historically been the preserve of the British aristocracy. For anyone interested in game, shooting grouse is about as good as it gets. If pheasant shooting is a yacht, grouse shooting is a luxury private liner reserved only for the very rich. Owning a grouse moor is like owning a
Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning It has been shown conclusively that people who listen to the news or read a newspaper at breakfast are more miserable than those who wisely maintain themselves in ignorance. Unfortunately, help for the former is not at hand: one of the main stories in the newspapers recently was that
‘Sexual intercourse began in 1963,’ wrote Philip Larkin; consumer debt, with similar connotations of gratification and regret, began in Britain three years later with the launch of Barclaycard, based on the model of the world’s first mass-market credit card, BankAmericard in California, which dated back to 1958. A retired bank manager once told me he
Margareta Pagano on why businessmen should watch Robert Zemeckis’ latest film Chief executives under pressure in these gruelling times should sneak out, or stay in, to watch Beowulf, the 2007 film starring Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie that has just been released on DVD. They could learn what it is to be a really great hero —
There are certain words, carrying overtones of money and privilege, which stir up strong emotions. One is ‘private income’. ‘What’s held me back,’ says Uncle Giles in The Music of Time, ‘is that I’ve never had a private income.’ J.B. Priestley used to say, disdainfully, ‘He’s got a private income voice.’ There were various euphemisms
Gazing out over India’s Gulf of Kutch from the small jetty owned by Essar Oil, you would hardly think you were witnessing the birth of one of the world’s new industrial heartlands. Placid turquoise waters stretch out to the low landmass opposite; behind you lie mile upon mile of shimmering salt pans where flocks of
Imagine the scene at around 10 p.m. last Thursday night in the private apartments at Buckingham Palace. It could well have been past normal bedtime for the Queen and Prince Philip, but they were sitting up — perhaps aided by a scotch and water or some camomile tea — waiting so that Her Majesty could
It is said that when the British public is asked, ‘What is your favourite poem?’, the one chosen by most people is Kipling’s ‘If’. Is there any evidence for this? And is it still true? And what would the Americans choose? Walt Whitman’s ‘Captain’? No, obviously not. But then what? Longfellow’s ‘The Ship’, I hope.
Next month I will break the habit of a lifetime and wait until the red reminder before paying my telephone bill. I will do so because BT has decided to charge me £33 a year for the audacity of paying my bill by cheque. BT is penalising people who pay by cheque because it wants
The title of the worst deal in British corporate history is hotly contested. Glaxo and SmithKline were worth £107 billion on the day they announced their merger: eight years later, they’re worth £57 billion, and they’re not quite the ‘kings of science’ their chief executive Jean-Pierre Garnier said they would be. Getting on for a
In the end, they may have to auction what’s left of Northern Rock on eBay When the nationalisation of Northern Rock was announced at the beginning of the week, commentators queued up behind the shadow chancellor to declare a return to the dark days of the 1970s and to dance on the ashes of Alistair
I gave up writing novels in my mid-twenties, when I was halfway through my third, convinced I had not enough talent for fiction. Sometimes I wish I had persisted. There is one particular reason. The point is made neatly by W. Somerset Maugham in Cakes and Ale: These remarks need qualification. I’m not sure that