Q. Sharing my name with a well-known property tycoon and philanthropist, I frequently receive invitations for dinners and other fund-raising events from organisations expecting a substantial contribution to their cause. I am not tight-fisted, Mary, but a minimum donation of £100,000 is something I can ill afford. The problem is that such amounts are rarely
Q. I have recently started going out with a new girlfriend. She is articulate, well-spoken, elegant, witty and polite — in short, a real catch. There is only one thing that puts me off: she holds her knife like a pen. You will accuse me of being an inveterate snob, which I hope I am
Q. I was recently invited to stay with some well-heeled friends who were renting a house in Tuscany. Having cleared up any possible confusion about payment (I wouldn’t have to contribute to the rent), I accepted their invitation. Early one evening I was strolling on to the balcony of my bedroom, reading Juliet Nicolson’s A
Q. A good friend of my husband’s always addresses me as ‘Gorgeous’ or ‘my sweetie’, as he does many of his other female friends. After two years it is starting to grate and I would like him to start calling me by my given name. How can I get the message across without hurting his
Q. I am worried. I have to attend the banquet of a livery company so senior that white tie is the order of the day. I am now over 70 years old. My son-in-law, slenderer by far than me, has inherited my tailcoat. My hunt coat appears regularly at hunt balls, but is now worn,
Q. I wonder what is the correct etiquette when one notices that a friend has something unattractive and highly visible in their nostril? I have a bit of a phobia about this. Obviously, one can be straightforward if it is a close friend, but I am shortly taking a house in Trebetherick for the John
Q. I have a small problem with vanity. I have made a successful application to join a specialist library where I can work in peace almost every day of the week and have access to an unrivalled set of references on my subject. I am aware that this is a privilege. However, because of the
Q. I read your ‘In the Chair’ Q&As in the online edition of The Spectator with interest. In this session you mentioned a dilemma of your own. You told of how your own good manners had once been compromised by your reluctance to dilute a conversation with the great Auberon Waugh by having to introduce
Q. Your correspondent (1 July), who was asked to pay towards a dinner to which he had been invited as a guest, has the opposite problem to my own. Whenever I have lunch with a much-loved friend, he pays for it. He is not wealthy and I would like to reciprocate his hospitality but he
Q. Parents of one of our son’s best friends at school are famous for their tightness. The father makes ‘funny money’ in the City, but they often invite people to their house in Devon, then suggest the guests take them out to restaurants as the mother ‘can’t face’ cooking. They are people my wife and
Q. One of my husband’s best friends is married to someone who, we know from past experience, is too demanding and controlling to be good company at a house party. The couple often go their separate ways on holiday and might well not object if he were to come without her to our house in
Q. I recently celebrated my CP (civil partnership), having been with my boyfriend for almost 21 years. I had planned it for months and arranged a flamenco evening at a smart venue in St James’s in London. We were restricted by the number of people we could ask, so I expected that all those who
Q. Recently visiting the city where a niece of whom I am very fond is in her final year as an undergraduate, I asked if she would like to meet for lunch or a coffee. I was taken aback and a little hurt to be told that, as she would have been celebrating handing in
Q. A colleague and friend and I have been particularly close since she ‘saved my life’ ten years ago, having arranged help for me during a medical emergency. But since my retirement a year and a half ago, my attempts to meet for lunch have been fruitless, the last time particularly upsetting when she slept
Q. Returning from a trade fair held at a neighbouring stately home I was reminded of the apophthegm ‘a fool and his money are soon parted’. Before my visit I thought a trade fair was full of dusty men with brawny arms selling exotic tools such as adzes, bradawls and drill braces. This, however, was
Q. We have lived in a very nice, civilised square in south London for nearly 20 years. It’s surprisingly private and everyone gets on well. One of our neighbours is an eminent Liberal Democrat peer of the realm. Unfortunately his wife and he persist in aggressively canvassing and leafleting our neighbours and us, even though
Q. I think I can offer you a solution to a problem which may plague others who spend intimate time with oenophiles and are driven to distraction by slurping. My brother is a mad wine-lover. He slurps his wine noisily. He is a physicist, and seems to be keen to prove that he can defy
Dear Mary… Q. I am shortly to give lunch to a number of high-profile people. Two of them have rung to inquire how late they can leave it before giving me a yes or a no. Do you agree with me that this behaviour, with its assumption that a better invitation may come along in
Dear Mary… Q. I am a consultant to, and former partner of, a professional firm in the suburbs of London, where I do four days a week working in an extraordinarily happy and democratic environment with political incorrectness to the fore. A problem has arisen of a very delicate nature, where it has been alleged
Dear Mary… Q. My husband’s 87-year-old father is greatly enjoying the Iraq war. With an understandable sense of personal invulnerability, he has been sitting in his ‘safe house’ in Cornwall, watching virtually every news bulletin and revelling in ‘the deep satisfaction of seeing rockets hitting their targets’, et cetera. We are taking our children, aged