Mary Killen

Q. While staying for a weekend in a five-star Umbrian paradise south of Siena, you can imagine my horror when my breakfast partner recoiled at my pulling out my Baedeker on Siena. I always carry Baedeker when centreville-ing, but my companion expressed abject mortification and begged me to put it away. I consider myself to

Q. I have edited a selection of letters which is to be published later this summer. It is more than likely that, as part of the promotion process, I shall be asked to sign a copy here and there. However, it is not really my book, but that of the distinguished and, alas, departed correspondent.

Q. While staying in Gascony a local grandee, with a formidable brain and a château of great historical importance, was invited to dine. As dinner proceeded one of the two female houseguests seated next to him transmogrified herself from a kind, cosy, close and down-to-earth friend of mine, into a cross between Simone de Beauvoir,

Q. I want to give a drinks party for 200 friends. The alcohol is within my budget. Most of my friends are recovering alcoholics and the others are too old to binge drink, but I have been quoted £30 a head for food. I do not want to pay £6,000 for, effectively, a few kilos

Q. I travel frequently to Cape Town where I have a house. I always fly in business class or sometimes in first class. I wonder when it is permissible as opposed to rude to put up the barrier between me and a total stranger in the seat next door during the 11.5 hours flight? J.L.,

Q. I am in despair because I am growing fatter and fatter with every week that passes. I seem to have developed the most enormous appetite and now want roughly double what I used to eat. I have had all the relevant medical checks done privately and there is nothing wrong with me other than

Q. I have started receiving regular emails from a very old friend inviting me to avail myself of the services of the wealth management company in which he is a partner. Since I am penniless, and from the uncharacteristically humour-free tenor of these letters, I can tell that I was never meant to be a

Q. During a lavish lunch party last month, our host was insulting about my new boyfriend, whom I had brought along with his permission. His actual words were, ‘He’s not my particular cup of tea, darling.’ He said this privately to me, not to the whole table. At the time I laughed it off and

Q. Later this summer my boyfriend and I are flying out to the Aegean. Our hostess emailed to say we can get a lift from the airport with another couple who are coming for the same week on the same flight and who have already booked a hire car. She says she only needs one

Q. I have caught a cold from a senior member of the royal family. I feel sure there must be ways in which I can turn this to my social and/or financial advantage and I admit that I have deliberately been sleeping in a draught in order to prolong the symptoms. What do you suggest,

Q. Please advise me. I have a friend whose mobile has no signal when she is at home. When I ring her landline her father always says he will pass the message on that I have rung but he often forgets. She does not call me back and I do not like to annoy her

Q. Since I now live alone and have spare bedrooms my house in London has become something of a destination for old friends who want to stay overnight. I love seeing them. I love making them welcome and giving them drinks and food if they want it but the one thing I have to admit

Q. A very dear friend has lugged back a present from China. It is the most hideously frightful, huge, garish, golden ‘money’ cat with a waving paw which he has specifically asked me to put in ‘my’ drawing room (along with the Meissen and Chippendale). My problems are fourfold; I do not want to upset

Q. Whenever I have my friends round for dinner, someone’s mobile phone will always ring and they will always answer it at the table. When I extend my next invitation, how do I request that they turn their phones off on arrival? I do find such behaviour at the dinner table unacceptable but many treat

In Competition No. 2539 you were invited to submit a problem in verse form to The Spectator’s agony aunt in the style of a poet of your choice. The assignment was inspired by James Michie’s poem ‘Dear Mary’, which appears in his superb posthumously published collection Last Poems and which brims with wit and humanity,

Q. While on holiday in the Middle East I contracted amoebic dysentery. Although it is an unpleasant condition, I am a bit overweight and the pounds have been dropping off. Do I go to the doctor or should I let the illness run its course and take advantage of the benefits that have arisen from

Q. I am dreading Easter as my children are always given so many eggs by their various godparents and grandparents. This is to say nothing of those they bring home from hunts. I consider it terribly bad for them to eat so much chocolate but since each egg has been effectively endorsed by the grown-up

Q. Somewhat fortuitously I was recently a guest of an eminent London picture dealer in an excellent restaurant in the West End. Among the assembled were various racehorse owners and trainers. I happened to be sitting next to a lord whose family are members of the Beerage. I could not help but notice that the