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As I leant over to speak to one of my dining companions in a busy restaurant, I felt something shuffle on my knee. I briefly wondered if it was a rat. But it was just a busybody waiter, who had taken my napkin from the table and folded it upon my lap. It was a bit strange that he did so without asking – but then, this same waiter had, when taking our order, crouched down (so that he was sitting on a chair) and asked, ‘Are you guys ready to order, and do you want me to explain the concept?’ So much to dislike. My most serious complaint is

How many Spectator readers are aware that tiny Montenegro, that silver sixpence of south-east Europe, so long lost in the jumbled purse of geopolitics, has some of the deepest canyons in the world? Not many, I’d bet – we know the luscious Montenegrin Mediterranean coast, if we know anything. And I’d wager even fewer know that one such abyss, the Tara River Canyon, is one of the fastest watercourses on the continent. I’d imagine no one at all, including me until five seconds ago, knows that the longest stretch of rapids on this giddying torrent is called Borovi. It’s like Utah hooked up with Iceland, somewhere in Sicily, and brought

I doubt that Sir Keir Starmer has ever been inside a TK Maxx. I don’t see him, even in his early parliamentary days, hunting and rummaging for designer fashion, or trying on dozens of duds in a bid to find ‘the one’. We know the Prime Minister loves swanky clothes at the lowest possible price – and that’s TK Maxx’s raison d’être. But I don’t think he has the attitude required for shopping there. It’s a pity because, with the right approach, TK Maxx can deliver great rewards. It has for me – calming my nerves when my personal life turned frantic and distracting me when the entire world seemed

Who honestly has the time or inclination to finish long novels these days? I yearn for a serene period when I can read The Red and the Black or The Raj Quartet each night before bedtime, but I seem to be imagining someone else’s life. When new content, cool and engaging, is flooded onto YouTube daily, when you have subscriptions to four different websites, and the telephone regularly pings (or rather, zhuzzes) with WhatsApp messages, entering the world of Julian Sorel or the British in India is a struggle. I used to read two or three books a week, very cheerfully, but since around 2016 we’ve lived in a world

The NHS uses 130,000 pagers, 10 per cent of the world’s total, and a fraction that slightly increased on 17 September when several thousand of those belonging to Hezbollah exploded. In fact, the NHS, where I work, and Hezbollah share certain problems when it comes to communication infrastructure. A few years ago, I was delighted to see a ward computer with a floppy disk drive – 5.25”, of all things, and be thankful if you’re too young to know the difference between that and 3.5”. To experience the tyranny of a pager, to wear a small device on one’s belt and live under its fickle imperious sway, is to understand

The Starmers were supposed to have the moral high ground – at least according to Labour eschatology – and yet we read of their grubby relationship mega-donor Waheed Alli. Alli was given a security pass to 10 Downing Street in return for his money. During the election, he lent Team Keir the use of his £18 million Covent Garden home. Lady Starmer, meanwhile, certainly has time and taste for more than NHS occupational health work. Vics was pictured front row at the show of London Fashion Week’s wokest designer, Edeline Lee, dressed head to toe in Lee’s own creation, a polka dot dress (on loan), worth over £1,000. Altogether, Vicky