After a 5 a.m. start, I arrived at the departure gate in Nice airport to discover there was an air traffic control strike and my flight had been delayed by two hours. Annoyance gave way to relief when the board turned red and all later flights were cancelled. This was the week of the Spectator
‘You need a Wwoofer,’ said the guest as he luxuriated in the big armchair by the roaring fire in our sitting room. We looked at him blankly for a moment before I replied: ‘We have a woofer. Two woofers.’ And I nodded to the spaniels lying at our feet. ‘No, I’m talking about the Wwoof
When I was a young man, the claim that Britain was in danger of becoming the 51st state was a political slur mainly thrown about by the left, particularly those who objected to the presence of US military bases. But there was some anti-American sentiment on the right, too – Enoch Powell, for instance, had
You don’t have to look hard to find swaths of sports fans around the world who dislike England – England’s men’s teams that is. The women are a different matter. Now, surprise surprise, the Australians have come to the party. If they ever left. The trigger this time is Ben Stokes’s surly behaviour to the
Q. While on holiday in Corfu, we met a rather nice man who invited us to his house for dinner. The house turned out to be something of a palace. There were six of us around the table and a waitress came towards us. She had a tray with a bowl, sitting in a bed
I am mesmerised by the restaurants of Raffles London at the OWO (Old War Office) because war approaches and the Old War Office is now a stage set for food, floristry and linen. If this is civilisation – it isn’t really, but it thinks it is – who will protect it now? Will we even
During the last Olympics, Jane Edwards from Worcestershire wrote to the Times observing that Mrs Malaprop herself would have found stiff competition from commentators saying: ‘Edging their bets’, ‘Having a conflab’, ‘In one fowl swoop’ and ‘Off his own back’. The Olympic legacy has certainly included ‘off his own back’. It is curious how often
Time, Butcher’s Van, that I began To hymn you panegyrically! When at your wheels the gravel pinged And tingled, no van, were it winged, Could have arrived more lyrically! We marked the man vacate you, Van, To hob and nob satirically With maid and cook, produce the book To sign as
The geometric universe reels beside the motorway – this Lammas night, a measure on the harvest sway of ears, a murmured song, a lullaby from spheres of leaf-green light, breathes circles, petals, stars, makes rough bristles collapse suddenly as one, and, while the lorries pass, the pattern’s spun.
Life begins, everlastingly, with light.A cloud-green chaos, the creator’s tear,that crystal deluge breaks to disappear.Rich oil, soft ochre-black, becomes a heightof stone, to pierce, amid the wilderness,our Virgin Mother’s deep azure and gold.Her fingers, hesitant as blood, unfoldto bless the child above the last abyss. Land’s End. Nanjizal Bay at low tide formeda cratered Armageddon
Pop stars rock on nowadays into their seventies. And jockeys too – despite the physical dexterity and instant-decision-making required – are lasting longer. Jimmy Quinn and Franny Norton only quit the saddle in their mid-fifties; Joe Fanning is still going strong at 55. On a sweltering Ascot day recently I enjoyed a chat with John
