These days the world is experiencing an unprecedented overload of photographs, a global glut of pictures. More and more are taken every day on smartphones and tablets. They zip around the world by the billion. When I went to Wolfgang Tillmans’s exhibition at Tate Modern, the galleries were full of people taking snaps of the
Gstaad Back in the good old days a funicular used to take skiers up, bucking all the way and stopping from time to time when the snowdrifts across the track got too deep. We used to wax our skis at every opportunity, deposit them in the baggage car, and ride the outdoor car. Most of
All told, I find that in the last week I’ve slept with a Chinaman, three black women from the United States, four South Korean women and one South Korean man. I slept with the South Korean man first, for two nights running, at the Chameleon Hostel in Alicante. Joon-woo and I shared a 9’ by
Shoot me if I ever let slip I’ve been mucking out with rubber gloves and a dustpan and brush. As God is my witness, I have just left a stable yard where the clientele were all ‘non-riders’ — women whose only joy in horse-owning was to make the mucking out last as long as possible.
When the generals have lost heart and crept away from the battlefield it is hard for the ground troops to keep up their spirits. Although the Cheltenham Festival buzz is already in the air, BetBright Chase Day at Kempton Park last Saturday definitely had something deflated about it. Everybody was still doing their jobs but
February is probably the most exciting and glamorous month in the bridge calendar. A couple of weeks ago, über-sponsor Pierre Zimmermann held his Cavendish Monaco Teams and Auction Pairs tournament, which attracts the best players in the world, all vying for a chance to pick up the big player’s pot or score in the auction.
In the audience-free world of TV, where ‘acting’ and visuals have become of far greater importance than the actual words, it is no surprise that mumbling has become the fashion. Any ancient Greek actor engaging in such self-indulgent behaviour would quickly learn all about it. Tragedies and comedies were performed by masked actors, required both to
Camilla for Queen Sir: On reading Melanie McDonagh’s argument against there ever being a Queen Camilla (‘Against Queen Camilla’, 25 February), I was reminded of a line from Brideshead Revisited, ‘Beryl is a woman of strict Catholic principle fortified by the prejudices of the middle class.’ Her opposition to Camilla seems to ignore the long tradition
A fortnight ago I got a taste of what being far too famous might feel like. A leak that I’m a contender for the Mary Berry slot on The Great British Bake Off morphed into the fake news that I’d got the job. For 24 hours it was a lead story — then it was
And the losers are… La La Land was mistakenly announced as winner of the Oscar for best picture before the error was corrected in favour of the film Moonlight. Some other announcements which went terribly wrong: — In 2015 Miss Universe host Steve Harvey announced Miss Colombia as the winner. Two minutes after she had
My partner has become a recycling fascist. She checks everything I put into the bin. I received two bollockings today alone — the first at breakfast because I did not make a distinction between the top of my small bottle of Actimel (non-recyclable) and the bottle (recyclable). I do try to do my best, but is
When Kingsley Amis won the Booker prize for The Old Devils in 1986, he said that he had previously thought of the Booker as a rather trivial, showbizzy sort of caper, but now considered it a very serious, reliable indication of literary merit. It was a joke, evidently. Indeed, when he said it during his
Chief Constable Simon Bailey, who heads Operation Hydrant, the police investigation of ‘non-recent’ child abuse cases, now says that paedophiles who view images of child abuse should not be prosecuted, because police cannot cope with the numbers involved. Mr Bailey is wedded to the doctrine that someone who says he is an abuse victim must
Ferdi is a café in Shepherd Market; I write about it only to comfort you, because you are not rich, and so you cannot afford to go there, because you would have to pay £140 for two courses without wine. It probably thinks it is a restaurant, wants to be a restaurant, but it isn’t.
I have long pondered the motive with which Michael Wharton, for long the author of the Daily Telegraph’s Peter Simple column, gave a memorable detail in his second volume of memories, A Dubious Codicil, about the habits of his rival Colin Welch: ‘He had a habit of picking his nose, occasionally tasting the extracted mucus
As Prime Minister, John Major was intolerant of opposition from within the Conservative party over the EU — memorably calling Maastricht rebels ‘bastards’. It was unwise, and the bad blood it created within his party has been swirling around ever since. Now that the tables have turned and Sir John now finds himself the rebellious outsider
Home Sir John Major, the former prime minister, made a speech at Chatham House in which he called the referendum vote for Brexit ‘an historic mistake’. The Lords got its teeth into the European Union (notification of withdrawal) bill. A merger between the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse foundered after the LSE refused a
One unclued light is the origin of the remaining unclued lights (three of two words), individually or as a pair. Across 4 Stagnation’s the making of these adversaries (11) 11 It’s for refreshment in moderation — there’s no din (7) 12 Reptile from southern-most headland (6) 13 Nut lovers’ collection in Laurel’s birthplace (9)
In Delmore Schwartz’s story ‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities’, a young man dreams he is watching his father and mother’s engagement onscreen from a seat in a cinema. Weeping at the certain knowledge of the pain to come, he’s patted on the back by a woman. ‘There, there,’ she says, ‘all of this is just a
