Magic of New Orleans
More than 11 years after getting sober, memories of my more disgraceful drunken nights can still make me blush with…
Everlasting love
A few weeks ago, feeling stale and stressed, I escaped to our dilapidated cottage in Dorset for a few days…
Losing the plot
You know those sad, confused people you sometimes see, standing on street corners and shouting dementedly at passing cars. Well,…
Parental guidance
Whisper it ever so quietly, but I think we might just be through the worst that winter has to throw…
Out and about
We are already more than halfway through January and I am still managing to stick heroically to my new year’s…
Sounds for a cool Yule
One of the unwritten rules in our house is that Christmas should never be mentioned until a few days before…
A night at the opera
Thanks to the generosity of friends, Mrs Spencer and I went to the opera the other week, an exceptionally rare…
Box of delights
I don’t know about you but I have to steel myself these days to turn on the Today programme in…
Mammoth enterprises
Mammoth enterprises
Musical heaven
Here in suburban Surrey it is already the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The damson tree in our front garden is so weighed down with fruit that the branches almost reach the ground, as if it were impersonating a weeping willow, and my dear old mum has made two jars of delicious jam, with the promise of many more to come.
Tim Rice: a hard graft to success
When one thinks of Tim Rice, one doesn’t exactly picture a man who has had a tremendous struggle to make it to the top.
Radio rage
It’s the small things that drive you mad.
Crowded house
In ‘Poetry of Departures’, in which Philip Larkin imagines escaping his existence as a librarian for a life of wild daring and adventure, he writes:
We all hate home
And having to be there;
I detest my room,
It’s specially-chosen junk,
the good books, the good bed.
The great divide
It seems to me that society can now be divided into three different types of people on principles that have nothing to do with class, wealth or status, and everything to do with one’s ease — or lack of it — with modern technology.
Trip switch
The drugs don’t work sung the Verve on one of their best songs, and I’m feeling the same myself at the moment.
Passing pleasures
I was in New York the other week, furtively sneaking into a preview of the doomed new Spider-Man musical, which features music from Bono and The Edge of U2.
Labour of love
I have long believed that a part of you dies in winter and doesn’t come back to life until you feel the sun on your face and a mid-westerly breeze in the air.
Box of delights
Sitting on my desk as I write are two objects of wonder and delight.
The nostalgia business
The extraordinary thing about rock’n’roll is its longevity.
Big spender
Three months ago I wrote here about my chronic Amazon habit, in which I recklessly buy books, DVDs and CDs I will never have time to read, watch or listen to. It has been costing me as much as drink did when I was still a practising alcoholic.
In the steps of Larkin
Last month, when unveiling my all-time top ten favourite albums, I predicted that the list would probably have changed by the autumn.
My all-time Top Ten
Regular readers may have noticed an embarrassing lacuna in this column.
Fighting addiction
As was so often the case with Bertie Wooster when he faced an interview with his fearsome Aunt Agatha, I feel a sense of impending doom as I write this on a beautiful morning in late June.
Hippie dream
By and large, I try to keep the night job out of this column.
Eclectic top ten
That splendid old bruiser Michael Henderson, no stranger to Spectator readers, and as passionate about music and poetry as he is about cricket, has, as so often, a bee buzzing in his bonnet.
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