Bruce Anderson

Nineteen-eighty was a great vintage, at least for American politics. I was fortunate enough to spend many months of that year in Washington, anticipating the election of President Reagan. The outgoing Jimmy Carter was a misery-gutted mediocrity: the man who put the mean into mean-spirited. I am prejudiced, in that I have never finished one

In St-Julien, amid the gentle landscape and the gravelly soil, there is a vineyard that had gone to sleep. According to the 1855 classification, Branaire-Ducru was a fourth growth. Back in the 1980s, however, it was neither rated nor priced accordingly.  People bought it because it was relatively cheap, but it had slipped a long

Although the sample may seem unscientific, I have established a link between dry martinis and longevity. There was a wonderful old fellow called Roland Shaw, who lived to be nearer 90 than 80, and lived is the word. Even given the age of the vehicle, the mileage was prodigious. More than six-and-a-half feet tall, like

I have a friend who brought shame on his family. Rupert Birch was educated at Westminster and the House. Descending from a long line of writers, artists and journalists, he was admirably qualified for a distinguished career of cultivated indigence. Instead, he became a banker. But the fall of man can be followed by redemption.

As one approaches St James’s Street from Pall Mall, there is an enticing window full of whisky bottles. Part of Berry Bros & Rudd’s temple complex, it is devoted to Glenrothes, a Speyside Malt. The bottles do not look as if they were designed by a marketing man and their labels largely consist of tasting

Puritanism is like sea water. When it meets resistance at one point, it promptly finds another route. I came to that conclusion during the Tory conference in Manchester. If you passed a couple of Tory representatives, they might well be discussing community. Every ‘community’, every diversity, that you could think of was in view, plus

At Tory party conferences circa 1980, there would usually be a day when the Daily Telegraph team looked glum. One would enquire why. ‘Dunno why I’m bothering to write this. Word from London is that we won’t have a paper tomorrow. The inkies’ll stop the presses.’ In those days, the print workers’ unions would always

We should all eat humbly. There is no sense in foraying to far-flung continents in search of fancy victuals. We should be content with the near-at-hand: the harvests of our fields, hills, rivers, seas and moors. The Chinaman has his bowl of rice, the Irishman his cauldron of potatoes. At this time of year, our

Forty years ago this English summer, Australia was stricken by a cultural catastrophe. The damage to national morale has reverberated down the decades. It has contributed to the implosion of Australian cricket and the loss of the Ashes, now irrevocable. The disaster occurred when the only two intellectuals in the convict settlements both bought one-way

Ou sont les bouteilles d’antan? With the onset of middle life, a good bottle can take on a melancholy aspect. Ou sont les bouteilles d’antan? With the onset of middle life, a good bottle can take on a melancholy aspect. The other day, I was lucky enough to be at the drinking of a ’67

About ten thousand years ago, man learned to control fire. That was one of the most important events in pre-history: a crucial part of the transition from a humanoid past to a human future. But the flames were domesticated, not tamed. Ten millennia later, fire is still a killer and a destroyer. In our cities,

In Rome, there is a palace which is the capital of the world’s smallest state. In Rome, there is a palace which is the capital of the world’s smallest state. The medieval Church had many mansions. As well as orders devoted to prayer and contemplation, there were other bodies, for whom the way of the

A limestone escarpment meanders south from Dijon. The product of prehistoric geological conflicts, it is now an arcadian idyll: the Côte-d’Or. Ducal Burgundy was one of the hauts-lieux of civilisation, and its resonances are all around you. But even before there was a duchy, Charlemagne enjoyed the wines of Burgundy, as had the Romans. That

I had an old friend — now, sadly, dead — who spent his final years in terror of his wife. I had an old friend — now, sadly, dead — who spent his final years in terror of his wife. By the time he reached man’s estate, he had developed a taste for good claret.

Alastair Campbell had a cynical term for the attempts to recruit Tories and others to Tony Blair’s big tent: ‘Operation Gobble’. In 1916, the Tories went into coalition with Lloyd George’s liberals. They gobbled them, spat out Lloyd George and reduced the Liberals to third-party status. In 1931, the Tories formed another coalition, with some