St Moritz Once upon a time, not that long ago, St Moritz was the world’s greatest resort, an exclusive winter wonderland for royalty, aristocrats and shipping tycoons. I’d say the place reached its peak between the 1940s and the late 1960s; like the rest of the great old resorts around the world, it’s been downhill
‘We’re at war!’ said the taxi man as I installed myself for the long drive to Marseille. I put a fist to my mouth and tooted my imaginary bugle. But world war three – as he saw it – was no joking matter. My tootling bugle irritated him and his voice rose by a querulous
Trees glorious trees. People can’t get enough of them. They don’t want to take care of trees, they just want to plant more and more of them. We have so many trees not being cared for by our local council that I was utterly amazed to see volunteer do-gooders planting saplings around the village green
Vladimir Putin’s decision on Sunday to put his ‘deterrence forces’ – code for nuclear weapons – in a high state of readiness revived a fear in me that I haven’t experienced since the fall of the Berlin Wall. As someone who spent his teenage years during the Cold War, the threat of nuclear war was
Q. Recently I started hanging out with a new friend. We are both in our twenties, single, and usually go to gatherings and talks downtown. I’m working part-time and studying, she has graduated and is working full-time. We both live in the suburbs, not too close to each other. I drive, she doesn’t, and she
The inhabitants of Tuscany and Umbria can claim to be the most civilised beings on the planet, even exceeding the Afrikaners and the Ulster Prods. In the farms, villages and hill towns, there is an easy understanding of life’s pleasures, naturally including food and drink. One might describe it as prelapsarian, except that Adam and
‘This will interest you,’ said my husband, looking up from the smeared screen of his telephone. For once he was right. It was a Twitter post about a memorable remark during the invasion of Ukraine. Snake Island is a small, bare outpost in the Black Sea near the Danube Delta. When a Russian cruiser invited
All it takes is an Alice moment ducking my head to go down the passage into house number seven and my huswif’s eye takes over approves the stone dresser (not much dusting), the handy storage cells, the fit and bulk of the front door’s slab, the mattress of bracken, the sheepskin rugs. And outside a
Here’s a useful tip. Go to the Royal Mail website and you can ask your postman to collect letters or parcels from your home at a cost of 60p per item. You pay for postage online, print a label and book a collection for the following day. Granted, it’s an extravagant way to merely avoid
Even when the authorities were refusing Milton Harris the right to renew his training licence after he got his finances in a tangle and went bankrupt in 2011, they acknowledged that nobody questioned his ability to train racehorses. Nor can they. On Saturday, in Kempton’s Adonis Hurdle, Milton’s Knight Salute, purchased for just £14,000, took
