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Friday

Stephen Arnell

The art of the insult in movies

As Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson trade insults, here’s a look at some of the best – and most wounding – barbs in film. Full Metal Jacket (1987) Amazon Rent/Buy Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, the master of full-on, spittle-flecked abuse, eventually gets his comeuppance for belittling conscripted recruits in Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam war classic. A prime example of Hartman’s cruelty is when he addresses Vincent D’Onofrio’s hapless Pyle: ‘Were you born a fat, slimy, scumbag puke piece o’ shit, Private Pyle, or did you have to work on it?’ R. Lee Ermey, who played Hartman, had previously been a US Marine drill instructor in Vietnam and – with Kubrick’s enthusiastic urging

Wednesday

Emma Wells

The mysterious history behind an 11-bedroom country manor that’s up for sale

With its perfectly soaring Jacobean-style architecture, leaded windows and enchanting walled garden, all set within 17-plus acres of East Sussex countryside, Grade II* Listed Possingworth Manor is the rural idyll of an English country house.   Despite its tranquil appearance, however, the 11-bedroom, 8,500 sq ft manor near Uckfield has had a disproportionate share of drama over the years, as the site of some legendary lovers’ tiffs, and with links to royalty past and present, literary and artistic icons and wartime heroes, to boot. The world’s most famous pair of royal mistresses (Alice Keppel and her great-granddaughter, the newly crowned Queen Camilla), Vita Sackville-West’s lover Violet Trefusis and Major Pat Reid, author

Alice Dunn

The best moments of music in literature

Haruki Murakami said that ‘I feel that most of what I know about writing fiction I learned from music.’ Music and literature enjoy a close relationship. Authors rely on rhythm and tone for their writing. So when a writer chooses to incorporate music into their work, it always makes for a powerful moment, connecting the reader in a sensory way to the story.  Music functions as a character in Pride and Prejudice. As a guest at Netherfield Hall one evening, Elizabeth Bennet’s sister Mary gives a performance that is not well received. Her voice is described as ‘weak, and her manner affected.’ Mary, however, remains blissfully unaware of the uncomfortable

Tuesday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The dark side of Barbie dolls 

On hearing of the Duchess of Sussex’s alleged fondness for the Diabolo de Cartier Music Box (retailing for almost £3,000, in lacquered wood and gold-finish metal, freed bird motif turns when ‘La Vie En Rose’ plays), I reflected on the adult liking for childish things.  Though the box is ostensibly for Meghan’s infant daughter Lilibet Ltd – sorry, Lilibet Diana – a source told Australia’s New Idea magazine that ‘Meghan has fallen in love with Cartier’s absolutely divine music boxes.’ It’s not hard to think of the Duchess of Montecito sitting alone at dusk as the poignant tune about living one’s best life plays, pondering her next move, while Harry and the kids get on with some finger-painting

William Cook

How to make the most of Basel’s spectacular artistic delights

Standing on the quayside beside the River Rhine, gazing at the happy teenagers swimming in the dark water down below, I wonder where the last forty years have gone. Forty years ago, I was one of those teenage swimmers, swept along by the fierce current through the centre of this ancient city. Now, half a lifetime later, I’m one of the watchers on the shore. No matter. Switzerland’s most stylish city is always full of interest, whether you’re a participant or a spectator, and this week it plays host to the most prestigious art fair in the world. On the face of it, Art Basel sounds like just another boring

John Sturgis

In praise of Delia Smith

They’re now such common ingredients that you can buy them in all but the smallest shops: halloumi, pesto, couscous, salsa, roasted peppers. But their origins as culinary staples can be traced back to the publication 30 years ago of Delia Smith’s Summer Collection. This book and the accompanying TV series changed British cooking forever. Delia didn’t invent much but she brought things to the mainstream. The unprecedented success of Summer Collection – both the book and the show – also made Smith into the biggest figure in British cooking for a decade or more. The follow-up, entitled, rather obviously, Winter Collection, built on Summer’s success to become one of the best-selling books of the decade

Monday

Anna Richards

The strange intimacy of flat-sharing

When I was younger, I dreamed of being a Jane Austen heroine. Nearly two decades on, in my late twenties, I am living in the guest room of a married older cousin in a leafy suburb of London, house-hunting in the middle of a housing crisis, waiting on a security clearance for a public-sector job, and wending my way through a dizzying array of balls, dinners, and public talks while I wait, observing a long-decaying society in the fullest bloom of its collapse. The 1990s dream of single professional womanhood, complete with uptown apartment, financial independence, and unlimited opportunity has been unmasked as an illusion, while the underlying realities of

Andrew Cunningham

Are boys’ schools a thing of the past?

First Charterhouse, then Winchester – now Westminster. In the past two years alone, three of Britain’s most famous schools have recently turned, or are planning to turn, fully co-educational. How many more boys’ schools will follow?  One popular argument for the change is, as ever, that girls will be a ‘civilising influence’ upon teenage boys – especially in the light of the sexism exposed by the ‘Everyone’s Invited’ scandals. The more that teenage boys learn to study with girls and respect them, the less likely it is such scandals will be repeated. I taught at two traditional schools which turned co-educational in the 1990s, Uppingham and Cranleigh. Then, it was

Sunday

Stephen Arnell

‘I’m sorry, Dave’: AI in the movies

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rarely been out of the headlines over recent months, creating foreboding that computers will soon be an existential threat to humanity. Movies have long anticipated this, beginning almost a century ago with Fritz Lang’s dystopian classic Metropolis (1927). Seven years earlier, Czech writer Karel Čapek’s stage play R.U.R. – Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots) introduced the world to the concept of conscious artificial beings. Here’s a look at artificial intelligence in ten movies: The Forbin Project (1970) Joseph Sargent’s (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) picture is something of a hidden gem, and could be – as they say – ‘eerily prescient’.  Within minutes

Friday

Penworthy

Could the King land his first Royal Ascot winner?

You don’t need to be a genius to know that if you are training for HM The King and HM The Queen, then it would be a shrewd career move to land a Royal Ascot winner for them later this month. This is, of course, the first time that the King and Queen will be having runners at the famous meeting under their new titles. Their trainers know that if they can engineer a winner for the royal duo at Ascot’s five-day event, it will generate hugely positive headlines all over the news and sports pages. I think the King and Queen have at least two first-rate chances of a