Uncategorized

Wednesday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Do cyclists know how hated they are?

Cyclists. I’ve become a tolerant cove in my old age but if there’s one word certain to raise my dander, it’s cyclists. In Brighton they think they own the place, enabled by successive stupid councils, who have spent tens of thousands of pounds on cycle lanes and those eyesore e-bikes all over town. With a murderous version of droit de seigneur – at odds with their right-on, self-righteous self-image – cyclists appear to believe that walkers are a lower order who they are free to run over as they please. Cyclists in Brighton seem particularly fond of riding on pavements, where the most damage can be done. It’s like they

Diana Hendry

Stationery is quietly making a comeback

All of a sudden, our local stationery shop – the Write Stuff – has grown a shelf labelled ‘Letter Writing & Correspondence: Original Crown Mill’. And there, in ranks, are pads of beautiful writing paper – vellum and laid, cream or white, A4 or A5 – plus boxed writing sets, decorated top and bottom with flowers and/or butterflies. All with colourful envelopes to match. ‘Goodness!’ I said to Antonia, who owns the shop. ‘Who is writing letters these days?’ ‘The young,’ she said. I was astonished and charmed. Immediately, I bought a pad of Original Crown Mill Laid (Finest quality since 1870) and decided to write to the granddaughter currently

Tuesday

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

With Daria Lavelle, on her breakout novel 'Aftertaste'

33 min listen

Daria Lavelle was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and raised in New York. Her work explores themes of identity and belonging and her short stories have appeared in The Deadlands, Dread Machine, and elsewhere. Daria is the author of the critically acclaimed new novel Aftertaste which explores food, grief and the uncanny.  On the podcast she tells Liv about her ‘inexplicable’ love of olives as a child in Ukraine, trying to make it as a writer in New York and how to write about food without it feeling contrived. 

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

I’ve become a solar panel hustler

What better accessory for my fleet of electric cars (well, two) than my own solar power station, converting the rays of the sun into blistering acceleration? I am propelled by a love of tech gadgets and the prospect of a quick killing. Do not confuse me with Net Zero zealots – I’m in this eco game for myself. So far today, my roof has thrown off 62.8 kWh – enough to drive my 2019 Hyundai Kona Electric for 350 km. (The other car is a Tesla, which I am scared to take out after a dozen of its brethren were recently incinerated in Toulouse.) Solar panels are the best investment

Zoe Strimpel

Britain is now a slackers’ paradise

My friend recently told me about a young Chinese woman who was staying with them and kept tittering to herself. Asked what she was finding so funny, the answers were telling. In one case, it was because she had seen so many people lounging in parks that she had assumed the working day had been cancelled from on high – and was amused to find out it was a normal weekday. Then there was the way that all the shops and cafés were shut by 9 p.m. Again, the private merriment. ‘Nobody works here!’ she exclaimed gleefully. In a sense, she’s right. Of course some people work – those in

Nigel Jones

The curious case of Bella May Culley

I was belatedly baptised last week in the Church of England, and though Christians are enjoined to show compassion to sinners and forgive them their trespasses, my eyes do not fill with tears at the plight of 18-year-old Bella May Culley from Middlesbrough. Bella currently finds herself in Prison No. 5 in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi after she was accused of smuggling drugs into the country. The prison is described in British media reports as decaying and dangerous, but which, from the pictures, looks tough, austere and simply furnished – no worse than one might expect of correctional facilities in the Caucasian republic. Even someone as daft as Bella must

Monday

Rob Crossan

How to save Britain’s pubs

In Bradford a few weeks ago, I popped into a pub called Jacobs Well. It’s a squat old building, all but submerged behind the stultifyingly ugly road that grinds around the edges of the town centre. The Well was fairly quiet on a Monday night, but everyone there was congregated around the bar and it was immediately apparent that this was a place where long friendships are nurtured and strangers are welcomed. There were interesting cask ales, free hotpot and doorsteps of bread on a side table for anyone who fancied a meal, wonderful photos of old Bradford on the walls and a blackboard chock-full of handwritten notices advertising upcoming

Olivia Utley

The unfashionable truth? Early motherhood is wonderful

At the end of last year I developed a pathological aversion to going to my local supermarket, owing to a garish sign in the window counting down the number of ‘sleeps’ until Christmas. The twee Americanism was grating enough, but I had another reason to feel queasy: I was heavily pregnant with my first baby and my due date was Christmas Day. Of course, my husband and I were longing to meet our much-wanted son. But as the day drew inexorably closer and I dived ever deeper into the ubiquitous ‘exposés’ on early motherhood, I began to feel afraid. Is it any wonder? To read pretty much any book, magazine

Philip Womack

The semicolon had its moment; that moment is over

Rend your cheeks and rub ashes into your hair; for that most elegant, elusive of punctuation marks – the semicolon – is, if not yet quite dead, at least fairly close to being on first name terms with St Peter. Research from Babbel, a ‘learning platform’, shows that usage of the semicolon in texts has plunged by 47 per cent over the past two decades. I would be more surprised if the Pope turned out to be Catholic. These days, students struggle with commas and apostrophes. How can the poor milquetoasts be expected to grasp the finer usages of semicolons? This is all a terrible shame. Good punctuation is a balm for

Sunday

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Help! I'm trapped in a hi-tech hotel

Raffles Doha is one of the world’s weirdest, most improbable buildings. That’s it in the picture – a five-star hotel incorporated in one prong of the incomplete circle that is the 40-storey Katara Towers in Lusail City (the Fairmont Doha is in the other prong), on land reclaimed from both desert and sea. It’s an architect’s/despot’s fantasy turned reality. The bonkers design is meant to echo Qatar’s national emblem of crossed scimitars, and I’d love to see the back of the envelope upon which it was first sketched. It’s far, far beyond my miserable hack’s pay grade, but invited as a guest I’m ashamed to say that I couldn’t resist. The tone was set

Saturday

Alec Marsh

The overlooked brilliance of BBC’s The Hour

With reluctance – but enticed by its surprisingly starry cast and the fact that it had landed, ironically enough, on Netflix – I recently tuned in to The Hour, the BBC’s 2011 political drama series. It’s about a BBC TV news programme being launched in 1956, against the backdrop of the Suez Crisis. And, goodness me, isn’t it good? Better than good, in fact – it’s a high-carat television diamond, and not some lab-grown job either, but the real, romantic, sparkling deal hewn out of the earth and hawked via Antwerp before ending up in the Imperial State Crown. From the get-go – those classy, Hitchcockesque credits – you know

Friday

Penworthy

Bets for Newbury and York

The form of the Virgin Bet-sponsored Scottish Sprint Cup at Musselburgh last month is rock solid. The winner, American Affair, and the runner-up, Jm Jungle, filled the same two places in a hotter race at York yesterday off their revised marks. Fifth at Musselburgh after being backed into 2-1 favourite was COVER UP trained by the father and son team of Simon and Ed Crisford. The five-year-old gelding was beaten less than three lengths but I am pretty sure he is better than that. The horse can be tricky at the start but tomorrow he will be in the safe hands of William Buick, who has won on him three

Zoe Strimpel

How is Germany so weird yet so dull?

When I lived in Berlin a decade ago, I was struck by the contrast between the dullness of young Germans and the incredible weirdness of everything else. Only in German could the word for ‘gums’ (Zahnfleisch) mean ‘toothflesh’. And only in fleisch-mad Germany (the word for ‘meat’ is the same as ‘flesh’, which is somehow incredibly disgusting) would people snack on raw pork, a dish known as mett. Mett, also known, rather curiously, as Hackepeter, is sometimes offered at buffets in the shape of a hedgehog (what else?) with raw onion spines. It simply doesn’t get stranger. While musing on such things, I would cycle slowly around the bizarre gigantist

Zak Asgard

The tyranny of the talkative

When I was a child, all I wanted to do was talk. In fact, it got so bad that my primary school teachers were forced to give me a ‘wriggle cushion’ – an inflatable seat designed to pacify hyper children. I’m sure there’s a diagnosis in that somewhere. And as the years went by, I became known for my loquacity. Teachers at parents’ evenings would look at my mother with compassionate eyes and say things like, ‘My, my, our Zak is quite the communicator, isn’t he?’ Translation: your son is a gabby little monster. It was only when I reached maturity that I realised over-talking is a serious affliction and

Wednesday

The Spectator

Max Hastings on the real story of D-Day – The Book Club live

As a subscriber-only special, get exclusive access to The Spectator’s Book Club Live: an evening with Max Hastings. Join The Spectator’s literary editor, Sam Leith, and the military historian and former Telegraph editor-in-chief Max Hastings, to uncover the real story of D-Day. They will be discussing Max’s new book, Sword: D-Day – Trial by Battle, which explores – with extraordinary vividness – the actions of the Commando brigade, Montgomery’s 3rd Infantry and 6th Airborne divisions at Sword beach in June 1944. It will also be an opportunity to celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day. Following the discussion, attendees will have the opportunity to put their own questions to Max – and perhaps discover the