Christopher Howse is an assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph.
They said it In 2019, who said: 1. ‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood.’ 2. ‘I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at.’ 3. ‘Ninety per cent of giraffes are gay.’ 4. ‘I
You don’t say In 2018, who said: 1. ‘I have the absolute power to PARDON myself, but why should I do that when I have done nothing wrong?’ 2. ‘A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries.’ 3. ‘Frankly, Russia should go away and should shut up.’ 4. ‘It is absolutely ridiculous that people should
Weird world In 2017: 1. Police discovered thousands of what kind of plant growing in a disused nuclear bunker in Wiltshire? 2. Cuban exiles complained about an Irish postage stamp commemorating whom? 3. Which supermarket chain apologised for an advertisement before Easter that said: ‘Great offers on beer and cider. Good Friday just
Kate Loveman’s Samuel Pepys and his Books (Oxford, £60) abounded in memorable touches: Pepys buying a Mass book in 1660 and reading it aloud late into the night ‘with great pleasure to my wife to hear that she long ago was so well acquainted with’; or Pepys writing handy memos to self: ‘Consult Sir Wm
Say so In 2016, who said: 1. ‘Brexit means Brexit.’ 2. ‘We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain. Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.’ 3. ‘The Prime Minister — I should be pleased about this I suppose — seems to think he should be
‘No crib for a bed,’ says ‘Away in a Manger’ rather puzzlingly, since a crib is a manger. ‘No one paid me much attention, lying on the hard stones, a young child in a crib,’ says God made Man in the Old English poem ‘Christ’. At the beginning of his prophecy, Isaiah declares: ‘The ox
They said it In 2019, who said: 1. ‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood.’ 2. ‘I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at.’ 3. ‘Ninety per cent of giraffes are gay.’ 4.
You don’t say In 2018, who said: 1. ‘I have the absolute power to PARDON myself, but why should I do that when I have done nothing wrong?’ 2. ‘A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries.’ 3. ‘Frankly, Russia should go away and should shut up.’ 4. ‘It is absolutely ridiculous that people should
Weird world In 2017: 1. Police discovered thousands of what kind of plant growing in a disused nuclear bunker in Wiltshire? 2. Cuban exiles complained about an Irish postage stamp commemorating whom? 3. Which supermarket chain apologised for an advertisement before Easter that said: ‘Great offers on beer and cider. Good Friday just
On 26 August 1880 Henry Russell consummated his marriage in an unusual way. He was, to his own mind, married to the Vignemale, the highest French peak in the Pyrenees, and, wishing to spend the night with his beloved, he climbed to the 10,820ft summit and got his servants to dig a trench, bury him
Christopher Howse has just written a book about Soho. He drank there regularly with Michael Heath, The Spectator’s cartoon editor, in the 1980s. Last week, in the editor’s office, they remembered a vanished world. MICHAEL HEATH: I introduced you to Soho. CHRISTOPHER HOWSE: Well, I don’t know if you’re entirely to blame for that. But
How did the cross, from being such a loathsome taboo that it could scarcely be mentioned, change into an image thought suitable viewing for all ages in public art galleries? There is no doubt about its early despicable reputation. A hundred years before the birth of Jesus, Cicero declared that ‘the very word cross should
During the second world war, while one brother was editing Punch as a national institution (‘Working with him was a little like helping to edit the Journal of Hellenic Studies,’ said a colleague), and another brother, given to asking questions like ‘Which way does a clock go round?’, was breaking codes at Bletchley (as an
Say so In 2016, who said: 1. ‘Brexit means Brexit.’ 2. ‘We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain. Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.’ 3. ‘The Prime Minister — I should be pleased about this I suppose — seems to think he should be
Say so 1. Theresa May 2. David Cameron (overheard on air, speaking to the Queen) 3. Jeremy Corbyn 4. Stephen Fry 5. President Barack Obama of the United States, warning against Brexit 6. President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines about President Barack Obama at an Asean summit 7. Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein politician 8. Hillary
What the Great Eastern was to Brunel, the New English Dictionary was to James Murray (1837–1915) — an unequalled task that was his life, and eventually his death. What was later known as the Oxford English Dictionary should be a ‘sweep-net over the whole surface of English literature’, said Richard Chenevix Trench, one of its
More brides in Britain go down the aisle to Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ than to any other tune, Simon Loveday notes. He cannot resist adding that ‘it seems doubtful that they have fully taken in the words of the rest of the song’. That must be true. ‘I’m not that chainedup little person still
A medieval party of 800 Armenians at the top of Mount Sinai suddenly found themselves surrounded by fire. Their pilgrim staffs shone like candles but, wisely chanting ‘Kyrie Eleison’, they were relieved that after an hour or so the fire abated and not an eyelash of theirs was harmed. The top of Mount Sinai is
In his friendly and beguiling voice, Jean-Christophe Rufin explains (in a way that reminded me of the pre-journey relish of Camilo José Cela’s Journey to the Alcarria) that, before setting off on foot for Santiago de Compostela, he went to a little shop in Paris and joined the Association of Friends of St James. I
It is a curious fact that the modern Hebrew for ‘atheist’, Tim Whitmarsh notes in passing, is apikoros. The word derives from Epicurus, who set up shop as a philosopher in Athens around 306 BC, but it became so domesticated in Hebrew that the medieval thinker Moses Maimonides, till he found out better, thought it
