Long life
25 May 2013
My mother’s father, Sir Richard Paget Bt, was not just an old-fashioned Somerset landowner but also an amateur scientist, artist and musician of boundless energy and curiosity, whose achievements included… Read more
18 May 2013
I sometimes think that, by the time I die, my entire life will have been blighted by sterile, unresolved arguments about Europe. I have to admit that the foundation of… Read more
11 May 2013
I am on my first ever visit to Sweden and enjoying it greatly. My idea of this country had recently become rather confused. I used to picture it as a… Read more
4 May 2013
I’m just back from a week in Italy where a grand political comedy playing in Rome has at least been some compensation for the poor weather and the general economic… Read more
27 April 2013
The long, intermittent debate about whether parents should be allowed to spank their children has erupted once again with the finding by an American research team that it doesn’t do… Read more
20 April 2013
One of the sculptures at the British Museum’s splendid Pompeii exhibition shows four ferocious dogs attacking a stag as it awaits its bloody death with quiet resignation. It is a… Read more
13 April 2013
As it happens, a male wild boar can weigh roughly what Luciano Pavarotti weighed when he was alive — about 330lbs, or more than 23 stone. But unlike the gentle… Read more
6 April 2013
Always on the lookout for new heart-wrenching tales of animal suffering, the press has seized upon the news that a great many British horse-riders are too fat for their mounts.… Read more
30 March 2013
Apart from the weather, which has been so relentlessly horrible that it now deservedly takes precedence in the headlines over even our desperate economic plight, this is turning out to… Read more
23 March 2013
Just a year ago on this page I was writing about Pope Benedict XVI’s elder brother Georg and how, while ostensibly discreet and loyal to his celebrated sibling, he contrived… Read more
16 March 2013
It is usually a mistake to return to places one has known as a child. I have only once been back to the large, white-stuccoed, early-Victorian manor house in Hertfordshire… Read more
9 March 2013
If you have nothing to do, are suffering from stress, and wish to be rendered comatose, I recommend that you get interested in the efforts being made by Edinburgh Zoo… Read more
2 March 2013
Eight years ago I was in Rome for The Spectator to write a piece about the election of a new pope after the death of John-Paul II. Within two days,… Read more
23 February 2013
I am pleased to report that my eight ducks have survived the great chill, when their pond was frozen over; for during all that time no fox ever ventured across… Read more
16 February 2013
One ‘bridge too far’ should have been enough, but it looks to me as if Michael Gove has already embarked on a second one with his new plan to tackle… Read more
9 February 2013
This is a big week for gays on both sides of the Atlantic. By the time you read this, the House of Commons will have voted to permit gay marriage,… Read more
2 February 2013
I went to a funeral last Saturday, a depressingly frequent occurrence at my age. But it was an exceptional funeral, not only because of its gloriously peaceful rural setting amid… Read more
26 January 2013
I am writing on what is known as Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. Or so the Daily Mail tells me. The newspaper claims that Blue Monday… Read more
19 January 2013
The advent of freezing weather in Northamptonshire is making me worry about my ducks. I have eight of them of four different breeds now sitting on the base of a… Read more
12 January 2013
William Rees-Mogg, who has died, the Oxford-educated member of an old Somerset family, was widely seen as the archetypal ‘gentleman journalist’, but he aspired to be rather grander than that.… Read more
Latest blogs
- The words ‘terrorist attack’ only dignify the barbarism Rod Liddle
- The View from 22 — Osborne’s property bubble, the ongoing Tory wars and Google’s taxing issue Sebastian Payne
- Woolwich eyewitness: one of the men fired a gun, but it backfired and he lost his finger Fraser Nelson
- Kindling by the pool – the changing face of holiday reading Mark Mason
- Woolwich attack: the aftermath James Forsyth
- ‘Not in our name’ – British Muslims denounce the Woolwich attack on Twitter Fraser Nelson
- ‘Soldier beheaded’ in south London: the Islamists repeatedly said they would do such things Douglas Murray
