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As 2025 gets under way, I’m going to guess that one of your hopes for the coming year is ‘to be happy’. I’m also going to take a punt that you’re likely to spend a considerable amount of time, effort and money doing things you hope will make you feel that way. But considering that happiness is the number one goal of most people living in the western world, here lies the unspoken paradox at the heart of this tireless quest. Most of us can reel off a list of things that we believe will make us feel good – a great holiday, a delicious dinner, a promotion at work,

I awoke in the early afternoon of 31 December 1995 face down on the carpeted floor of a mansion house flat in Notting Hill with the worst hangover I have ever had.  It is customary when writing about hangovers to quote the best description of the condition – by Kingsley Amis: ‘A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.’ And there’s also, of

The new year is almost upon us, and it’s time to dust off the taffeta dress and tartan sash and sally forth to the annual reel. No doubt you will have received a lovely stiffy in the post some months ago. Reeling, known to neophytes and the non-U as Scottish country dancing, is, I believe, one of the last indicators of poshness in this country. Unlike skiing, riding or shooting – which you can, of course, learn if you have enough money – reeling is decidedly not about the dosh. There is absolutely nothing flash about reeling. It’s the entertainment equivalent of an old Barbour While it is true that

I have already put up two horses ante-post for today’s Coral Welsh Grand National at Chepstow (2.50 p.m.) and with mixed results. Monbeg Genius, tipped each way at 20-1 last month, has been steadily backed ever since and, until this morning, was vying for favouritism. Manofthepeople, tipped each way a week ago at 50-1, has not been declared for the race and so that bet is lost. If Monbeg Genius jumps well and runs to the best form that he has displayed over the past two seasons, he will win. His close third to Corach Rambler in the March 2023 running of the Ultima Chase has proved to be elite

Anyone without time to read an author’s long works (most of us these days) might want to consider simply going to the top of the tree and reading their table-talk instead. Conversations with Writers, a series of books from the University of Mississippi Press, has hundreds of titles featuring collected interviews with different authors, from Sam Shepard to Graham Swift, Joan Didion to Nabokov, Edna O’Brien to Ken Kesey, nearly all of whom supply insights about writing or life itself on every page. ‘Worse things can happen than to write a novel and not have it published’ In many cases these books, with their reverence for literature and fascination with