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Wednesday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Enough with the King’s prostate

How very nice that the King is now out of hospital, back home and, will, we are told, soon be back in business with his red boxes. Is it too much to hope that we can be spared further updates on his condition?  ‘All Hail the King’s Prostate Honesty’. Oh yuck. Can we stop? We have, I think, heard enough about his enlarged prostate. Charles has been praised for being so open about his diagnosis in the hope that it will encourage other men to investigate this important organ. NHS England declared that the ‘enlarged prostate’ page on its website was read every five seconds on the day of the

Zak Asgard

America has warped our minds

Churchill immortalised the phrase the ‘special relationship’ in his 1946 ‘Sinews of Peace’ address. He was talking about the UK and the US. And when we think of America and Britain’s relationship, we think of the wars we’ve fought together and the diplomatic camaraderie we’ve shared over the past hundred years. We think of Iraq and Afghanistan. We think of Reagan and Thatcher waxing lyrical over the phone. But there’s something else that’s special about our relationship, and that’s Britain’s fascination with American culture. I was indoctrinated into American culture from an early age in the form of television I’ve spent my whole life watching America. We all have. Our

Calla Jones Corner

Inside my mother’s purse

I’ve been carrying with me a little black silk purse with a tortoise shell closing since my mother died 11 years ago. I suppose it’s one of the last things left from my beloved, stylish mother. To help me pick out a replacement, I enlisted my seven-year-old granddaughter, Maélle, a fashionista like me and her great grandmother The little black purse has been sitting in the bottom of my bigger purses; let’s call them handbags, although ‘handbag’ seems so old fashioned a word. I only use ‘handbag’ now to remember my French licence plate – EY 107 HB, ‘every year I buy 107 handbags’ – having moved here following my

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

With Edward Stourton

25 min listen

Edward Stourton is a broadcaster who has worked as foreign correspondent for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITN. He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Program, and presented the Today Program for ten years. He has authored eight books including his most recent, Sunday: A History of Religious Affairs through 50 Years of Conversations and Controversies which is available now.  On the podcast, he recalls chocolate-stuffed baguettes on Swiss ski slopes, reveals the disappointing breakfast options in the Today Program green room, and explains why heaven is eating oysters to the sound of trumpets. 

Zoe Strimpel

Retailers are hacking your brain

While perusing bins on the John Lewis website, having heard great things about the Brabantia 60-litre, I noticed my stress levels rise – and it wasn’t just because the lid-up height meant the bin wouldn’t fit in my new cabinet. It was because for my whole shopping session there had been a dribble of information about how many other customers had put the items I was looking at in their basket in the last 24 hours, how many had bought them and how fast the stock supply was dwindling. Over on the M&S website, a mattress topper flashed a banner: ‘In demand! Sold 43 times in the last 48 hours’. My

John Sturgis

Glenn Hoddle and the birth of cancel culture

Most England managers lose their jobs over bad results: Roy Hodgson was sacked after being humiliated by Iceland, Graham Taylor for losing a must-win qualifier against Holland, Kevin Keegan quit after a bitter home defeat to Germany. There have been exceptions, though: Sam Allardyce went for bragging to an undercover reporter how he could do certain favours for a hefty fee, Fabio Capello after a row with the FA over John Terry’s captaincy when accused of racism, Don Revie defected to take UAE oil money.  The episode seems to have foretold an imminent shift in our culture But Glenn Hoddle remains unique among England managers – possibly among any football manager anywhere

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

How to spend 48 hours in Munich

So, what are you up to this summer? Going to Germany, right? I mean, with both England and Scotland having qualified for the Uefa 2024 Euros (and with Wales still in with a chance via the play-offs) 14 June to 14 July is surely blocked off in your diary? It certainly is in mine. And with four matches being played in Munich, I know exactly where I plan to be when it comes to kick-off: in Italy’s northernmost city.  I did have something of a Where Eagles Dare moment, trying to blend in as I drank my fill and listened to the oompah band Oh, do keep up! That’s what locals and

Monday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Once you wear black, you’ll never go back

Like most clever people, I’m not over-fussed about clothing; there have been numerous studies showing that successful types – unless they’re in entertainment, showbiz or fashion itself, obvs – tend to wear the same thing every day. Whenever I hear the phrase ‘I like to express myself through what I wear’ I know we’re dealing with a dim bulb – how about expressing yourself through, I don’t know, your words and your actions? Fran Lebowitz once said ‘If people don’t want to talk to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your clothes?’ and though she was referring specifically to slogan T-shirts, I often think of it

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The best place to see art? Twitter of course

We hear a lot these days about how social media causes many of our ills. You may have heard some of that from me. And I was right. But I’ve recently realised that there’s one thing where the socials – in particular, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) – score a positive triumph. They are the best medium for the appreciation of paintings. Like most of us, I was corralled around museums and galleries as a child I know, I know, that sounds loopy. I can hardly believe I’m saying it myself. But hear me out. The purely visual arts have always been a bit of a problem area for me.

Mark Solomons

Is this the worst pop song ever recorded?

On a cold January night 39 years ago in Los Angeles, 46 of the world’s biggest egos gathered together to record a song that was, according to Netflix ‘The Greatest Night In Pop.’ The song was the grandly titled ‘We Are The World’, a hastily composed follow up to the monumentally successful British charity single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’? Just seven weeks earlier. At least those appearing in the British version came across as less wholesome and more honest Band Aid’s effort was hardly a great song but the occasion captured the UK’s imagination and wallets so soon after pictures of starving Ethiopians had sent shockwaves across the nation.

Friday

Penworthy

Five bets on Cheltenham Trials Day

If a glittering eight-race card at Cheltenham tomorrow doesn’t whet the appetite for the Festival in less than two months’ time, then nothing will. Plenty of reputations will go on the line at Festival Trials Day and there will be an abundance of clues to which horses might be winning huge prizes between 12 March and 15 March inclusive. Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of Cheltenham regulars in the Paddy Power Cheltenham Countdown Podcast Handicap Chase (Cheltenham 1.15 p.m.) headed by Il Ridoto. Paul Nicholls’s seven-year-old gelding has run no less than six of his seven most recent races at the course, including winning this race last year. However, that was

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

In praise of the big, fat Range Rover

Cars mirror humans: that is what they are for. (If they didn’t, everyone would drive a 2012 Ford Fiesta). And so, cars are obese too now. They are growing 1cm wider every two years, and only half of new cars now fit into on-street parking spaces, though car parks – presumably elitist! – fare better. Hellish, isn’t it? If I could choose a car to drive – Aston Martin aside – it would be a Range Rover I could fill this page with the horrors the Sports Utility Vehicle inflicts, particularly in cities. It’s a trope but in my experience it’s young men in hot hatches who reverse round corners

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

What the French get right about healthcare

Senior management was recently walking down the street and took a funny turn. With her habitual stoicism she ignored the swelling in her foot for two weeks until I finally persuaded her to go to the urgences (emergency room) at the local Polyclinique Pasteur, a mini-hospital in Pézenas, the town four miles from our village.  Nobody here seems to be waiting 84 hours in an emergency room, as one NHS patient recently did in Scotland There wasn’t much they could do about the annoying bone in her foot, that was shown to be broken after a wait-free visit to the on-site radiology suite. But the diagnosis was rapid. The advice

Alice Loxton

Historian’s notebook: Chaucer’s questionable fashion sense

I am chatting to Jon, an ex-tree surgeon from Derby, in one of the galleries of the British Museum. He became an amateur metal detectorist when his wife, Julie, gave him the kit on Valentine’s Day a few years ago. ‘Our honeymoon to Barbados was cancelled because of Covid’, he explains, ‘so this present was the trade-off’. It has proved a source of marital bliss: Jon adores his new hobby, and Julie enjoys ‘weekends of peace’.  How remarkable that these objects have spent centuries lying forgotten underground until – Beep! Beep! A few months ago, Jon pulled a strange, curved object from the sandy Staffordshire soil, which at first he thought

Wednesday