Family

Thursday

Peter Jones

Plato on the Today programme

A woman is invited to join the Today programme, and the chatteratae are immediately a-twitter on the subject of female equality. Unlikely as it seems, Plato was all in favour of it, as he argued in his Republic, and for a hysterically incorrect reason, too. Women in the ancient world had, in fact, far more important things to do than chair Footsie companies or hold down tightly scripted TV chat shows. The very existence of the state depended on them, for one simple reason: the biological imperative. Any state that did not maintain a viable population level did not survive. So since life was short and survival at birth precarious

Thursday

Toby Young

Can I turn the West London Free School into Fame Academy?

‘Another opening, another show,’ sang five-year-old Charlie on his way to school this morning — and then proceeded to belt out the entire first verse of the famous Cole Porter song. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. All four of my children are deep into rehearsals of Kiss Me Kate, this year’s ‘summer production’ at their primary school, and they’re taking it very seriously. Even more seriously than last year, if that’s possible, when they did Oklahoma! I say Oklahoma! and Kiss Me Kate, but in fact they’re bowdlerised versions, rewritten by the headmaster. This involves sanitising some of the content — ‘I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No’

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Books are a load of crap – the sporty kids have got it made

What a glorious sporting summer it has been so far. For some the highlight will have been Andy Murray at Wimbledon, for others that nailbiting first Test against the Aussies. But for me, none of this comes even close to matching the joy, the exultation, the triumph of the moment on an Atlantic beach a few days ago when our hot young female Portuguese surf instructor took Girl and me aside to comment on our morning’s performance. ‘You, Poppy, and you, James, are both good,’ she said. That’s ‘good’ as in the exact opposite of ‘bad’. Indeed that’s good, quite possibly, as in — though she didn’t actually express this

Nigel Farndale

Nigel Farndale’s diary: The dread moment when they announce next year’s school fees

Next time I’m in a sauna I’m going to say: ‘It’s like a school sports hall on prize day in here.’ As the mothers fanned their faces with the programmes, one of the other fathers, Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to Uruguay, leaned forward and whispered: ‘Rookie error, mate. Should have worn a white shirt.’ He was right. I was wearing a blue one, which meant I couldn’t take off my linen jacket. My interest in hearing from the headmaster about the school’s successes on the sporting field began to wane after the first three hours. I’m pleased for the Under 11Bs hockey team and all they achieved back in February,

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Why it’s fine to crash funerals

Q. Regarding the writing of ‘no presents’ on an invitation (Dear Mary, 6 July), my own experience is that many people ignore ‘no presents’ anyway. Some will not even ask for ideas, and you are likely to be inundated with cushions with ‘Still sexy at 60’ embossed on them and huge mugs yelling ‘Keep calm and carry on’ in bold colours. To pre-empt this, your correspondent’s wife might do better to send a round-robin email to all those invited saying she forgot to write ‘no presents’, but should anyone like to, they could donate to a charity of their choice. I think Ukip might ruffle a few feathers. — J.F.,

Thursday

Toby Young

The saddest discovery of middle age: I can get by without my old friends

A few years ago, I got the shock of my life when a girl I was sitting next to at a 21st birthday party asked me if I was a dad. ‘Are you asking if I have children?’ I said. ‘No, I’m asking if you’re the father of one of the guests.’ I almost fell off my chair. Until that moment, I had no idea that young people see me as middle-aged. I was 45 at the time so it shouldn’t have come as a shock, but I like to think I’ve inherited my father’s youthful appearance. Indeed, until that moment I was still pitching travel editors with the ‘amusing’

Thursday

Hugo Rifkind

I’ll tell you what really devalues marriage: patronising, preachy little tax breaks

The Conservative party is trying to redefine marriage. I can’t believe they think they’re going to get away with this. Throughout human history it has been one thing, which is a loving commitment between two people who want to share a life. Now they’re trying to turn it into something completely different. A tax break. It wouldn’t benefit me, even though I am married. Although I swear that isn’t the root of my objection. Honest. My wife and I are in the same tax bracket, you see, so sharing our allowance wouldn’t make much difference. What it amounts to, really, is an incentive for one of us to stop working

James Delingpole James Delingpole

It’s the secret of a successful marriage: my wife treats me like a dog

‘Here, Wolf,’ says the Fawn to me, showing me a saucer. ‘Look at this! This is the new place where you put your mouth things. See! See the saucer? Look at the saucer! See the saucer! This saucer will now live by your bed. This is the place where from now on you put your mouth things. Not on the floor. In the saucer. See Wolf? See?’ (My ‘mouth things’, I should explain, are the manky strips of surgical tape I use to seal up my mouth every night. This sounds weird, I know, but it does have a purpose. I practise this breathing method called buteyko). And that dialogue

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop my friends giving me Christmas presents?

Q. Over the years my close friends locally have been giving each other birthday and Christmas presents. Now, as I reach 60, it seems ridiculous to worry about choosing and buying all these presents for Christmases ad infinitum, as well as remembering each of their birthdays. Some of them have new daughters-in-law or sons-in-law and grandchildren on the scene, and more presents to buy, so they might welcome a truce. On my part, I am overwhelmed with stuff and don’t need any more. How do I stop the present giving/receiving without hurting their feelings? — Name withheld, Hampshire A. No doubt most of your friends are also overwhelmed with stuff,

Friday

Olivia Dakeyne

The odd couples

This is the first post in an occasional series about rediscovering old science books. Twins, Lawrence Wright posits, pose a threat to the established order. People have long been scared of, and intrigued by, them. The doppelganger holds a special place in the gothic canon, whilst some cultures have even seen men cutting off a testicle in the hope it would eliminate the possibility of twin-bearing. Conversely, twins have been held up in voodoo ceremonies as objects of worship or been the subject of televised wonder and investigation. Whether the sentiment is positive or negative, we see them as an aberration and have tended to hold such specimens at arm’s

Thursday

Mark Mason

The Astronaut Wives Club

There I was, slowly and not ungrumpily coming to terms with the fact that there weren’t going to be any more decent books about the Apollo missions. Only 12 men ever walked on the Moon, and the ones that were interested in writing autobiographies had already done so. There’d been the brilliant one-volume history of the whole project (Andrew Chaikin’s A Man on the Moon), and the personal memoir of what it meant to an ordinary kid growing up at the time (Andrew Smith’s Moondust). There were the big glossy coffee-table jobs showing every crater, and Norman Mailer’s over-written but still revealing account of being at Houston and Cape Kennedy,

Monday

David Blackburn

Fathers, sons and the beauty of a “borrowed” book

I spent the weekend in Dublin; consequently, I am suffering from what Apthorpe would have called ‘Bechuana tummy’. For the uninitiated, Apthorpe is the premier fool in Men at Arms, the first book in Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy. I was reading it in bed last night and was wryly amused by this joke, which hangs over two chapters: ‘The two lame men climbed into the car and returned to Kut-al-Amara in alcoholic gloom.  Chapter 7 Next day Apthorpe had a touch of Bechuana tummy, but he rose none the less.’ I return to Men at Arms often, but never without reason. I did so this time because Father’s Day fell

Thursday

Steerpike

A regal opportunity

The Middleton family’s party website is set for a revamp, I hear. James Middleton was serving his own cupcakes at last night’s Johnnie Walker Blue summer party when he let slip that the website would be stepping up a gear. What timing, methinks. The company has raised eyebrows in the past. Their wedding party kits went on sale at around the same time as the elder Middleton daughter joined The Firm. What will the company offer this time? How about some baby shower party packs or a christening kit? It really is a world of opportunity.

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Are my party chairs safe for fatties?

Q. With just a month to go of training as a primary school teacher, I am relieved and excited to have been offered a job. Now it has been a few weeks since I last spoke to one of my good friends in our PGCE cohort. I have many lively stories to tell of weird and wonderful escapades with wild children. However, I feel I should not call her, since I cannot be sure that she has been offered a post. — J.C.R.R., London SE11 A. Your tact is misplaced and you should call with your news. To be weirdly silent about it suggests your presumption that your fellow student

Thursday

Jane Kelly

It’s time to admit it: the NHS is unable to look after our elderly

I decided to become a hospital visitor last year, after being a patient and finding myself in something more like a factory than an old-fashioned ward. A terror of infection in 2011 (there were 2,053 deaths involving Clostridium difficile) has ended the cosy world of side tables covered in flowers and cards. Concerns about data protection have put paid to WRVS ladies pushing trolleys, and vicars walking around offering solace. There aren’t even many nurses about, and even if there were, you wouldn’t want to bother them for tea and a chat. It’s OK if you have family or friends nearby, but if you don’t, being a patient in today’s

Clarissa Tan

What Michael Gove should know about going to school in Singapore

I like to tease my friend Wei about being a tiger mother. She once told me of an incident where her daughter Shu was making an artwork for a friend as a birthday present. Shu doodled for a few minutes, then showed her mother a sketch of a funny face. ‘I told her to knuckle down, spend more time, and come back with a far better drawing,’ said Wei. ‘It just wasn’t good enough.’ I said that was a bit harsh on her eight-year-old, especially since it was not schoolwork but part of Shu’s leisure time. Wei snorted. ‘It was a gift for her best mate, yet she hadn’t put

Tuesday

Fleur Macdonald

Cult fiction – Amity and Sorrow by Peggy Riley

There’s an attraction, certainly, in joining a cult. Not a Sheryl Sandberg working women type cult but a good old fashioned we’re all in it together wearing hemp skirts type cult. No need to chivvy the nanny, check the Blackberry or prepare for 8am meetings. Simply pack the children off to daycare (the yard) and hoe some vegetables. That’s pretty much it for the day – apart from some worship and chatting to close female friends – until it’s time for hallucinogenic weeds and sex with a man who says he loves you. Amity & Sorrow, the debut novel for new imprint Tinder Press by Peggy Riley, explores the appeal

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

It’s all in a name | 7 May 2013

Having a baby and stuck for a choice of name? Let the eminently sensible and well-adjusted people of New Zealand help you out. Their government has just released a list of names parents wished to call their kids but were banned from doing so by an overbearing and meddling state. Luckily they’re still legal over here, though. So you could go for ‘4Real’ or ‘V8’ – or, if it’s your kinda thing, ‘Anal’. There were even kids about to be called ‘2nd’ and ‘3rd’ and ‘4th’, inspiration having deserted the parents. My favourites came from New Zealand a few years back. That’ll be the twins, Benson and Hedges. And then

Thursday

Toby Young

How can I write like that about my family? Easy. My wife isn’t reading

People often ask how I get away with writing about my wife so often. Doesn’t Caroline mind being cast as the matronly foil to my errant schoolboy? I’d love to say that she perches on my shoulder, chortling with pleasure as she vets every word, but the truth is she never bothers to read any of my stuff. That’s how I get away with it. The same is also true of my children, which is just as well considering the things I write about them. In last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph, for instance, I wrote a 1,600-word essay about why men with demanding jobs are less likely to complain about their

Tuesday

Mary Hannity

Schroder – one man’s journey into night

Erik Schroder is an East German who last saw his mother when he was five years old. In 1975 only his unspeaking father crossed the Wall with him into West Berlin and on to America. It is here that Erik Schroder becomes Eric Kennedy – his fateful, fictional second skin. It is Kennedy, deflecting wide-eyed enquiries in to his ancestry with a modest shrug (‘I wanted a hero’s name’), who is accepted in to college, who gets a job in real estate, who marries a woman named Laura and has a daughter named Meadow. But after the failure of this marriage, it is Schroder who kidnaps Meadow and takes her