Drink
Hopeless countries, wonderful wines
Although I promise to move on to drink, forgive me for beginning with a less interesting but even more complex subject: government. It is easy to patronise the Italians. The… Read more
The Spanish understand the pig and the sea
Spain: an easy country to enjoy; very hard, even for Spaniards, to understand. I remember a dinner party, sitting next to a girl who seemed to want to talk about… Read more
Sex and Margaret Thatcher
My last column discussed Lady Thatcher and drink. It is now time to move on to sex. But there is little to say. Hard as it may be for moderns… Read more
The grape, the grain and Margaret Thatcher
It is impossible to think about anything else. Her death was more of a shock than a surprise. She had, alas, outlived the quality of life, so the immediate sadness… Read more
Lock up your Burgundy - the Chinese are coming!
We should all perform good works. A friend of mine helps to run a soup kitchen in Soho. She summons the wives of the mighty from their seats, in order… Read more
A lord’s prayer
There was a splendid old fellow called Ian Winterbottom, successively a Yorkshire businessman, a Labour MP and a junior defence minister in the Lords (he later joined the SDP). He… Read more
The tastes of temptation
There ought to be a wise adage: ‘If invited to do good works, always procrastinate. A better offer is bound to turn up.’ About a month ago, the phone rang.… Read more
Horse and bourbon
At a club table, a group of us were discussing horse–eating, marvelling at the confusion and sentimentality of our fellow countrymen while telling hippophagic anecdotes. I mentioned a typically Provençal… Read more
A reason to like Ted Heath
My reference to Taylor’s ’55 elicited a number of communications about the glories of old port — and one on a less glorious veteran: old Edward Heath. When the Tory… Read more
Off the wagon
Like half of London, I gave the new year a surly greeting. It was time to diet. There are two sorts of diets. First, the ones that may work for… Read more
Waters of life
Even though they efface the landscape, the snows of midwinter make the deeper symbolism more apparent. The psychic differences between the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms, which long predate Alex… Read more
A cellar in Mayfair
There is mixed news. It must be a long time since the nightingales sang in Berkeley Square. The traffic drowned them out long ago. There are still relics of grace… Read more
Two glasses and 32 years
The wines change, and we change with them. It is 1980, in Washington, and a girl gives me a bottle of 1974 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon reserve as a birthday… Read more
In the colonel’s cellar
Like many soldiers, my old friend is a life-enhancing character. Whenever he phones up and says ‘Need your help’, one’s spirits rise. The help always seems to involve pleasure. This… Read more
What’s best for your liver?
British education has a lot to apologise for. Over the decades, our schools not only blocked their pupils’ access to literacy, numeracy and serious examinations. They perverted their taste in… Read more
An Italian secret
A miserable day: grey, grizzling, drizzly — October going on February. Our host had reluctantly given up the crazy idea of lunch in the garden; the first guests helped him… Read more
A conference of bottles
There was a girl who had a goat. By the standards of her species, she (the goat, that is) was not excessively surly or truculent. She permitted herself to be… Read more
A Sicilian renaissance
A Lincolnshire farmer died and went to Heaven. St Peter told him that there was a custom. Over dinner on his first evening, the new arrival would give a talk… Read more
Some eggs and a glass of wine
Caviar feasts stay in the memory. I remember one occasion when I scoffed a satisfactory quantity of the stuff with that old monster Bob Maxwell. As he wanted a favour,… Read more
A peach of a mistake
Lente, lente currite noctis equi. It only seems five minutes ago that I was devoting this column to the most important intellectual problem in the western canon — the oenophile’s… Read more
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