New York I’d gladly exchange waistlines with him if he’d teach me to cut a phrase the way he does, in print that is. I’m talking about none other than our own ‘Brute’ Anderson, whose style of writing I particularly admire but find impossible to emulate. But I have an excuse; English was my
My brother and I were taking a short cut through an alleyway and saw a copper coming towards us through the rain with a fishing rod in his hand. My brother is also a copper, though currently taking time off work for an intensive course of chemotherapy. He knows all the older coppers in the
‘Information,’ came the reply. ‘We want information.’ The voice echoed in my head. Oh no. Oh please God, no. A month after going under offer again the new buyer hasn’t even booked a survey. The emails from their lawyers come thick and fast demanding bits of paper. And just like the last time, I have
Laikipia, Kenya For weeks the farm has been in the eye of a storm, with violence swirling all around us in clouds of dust kicked up by multitudes of cattle. Last week to the west, tribal invaders burned down Kuki Gallmann’s tourist lodge overlooking the Mukutan Gorge. On Sosian ranch to the south our
I’ve just made a programme for Radio 4 about the populist revolts that swept Britain and America last year. Were they predicted in a book written by my father, Michael Young, almost 60 years ago? I’m thinking of The Rise of the Meritocracy, a dystopian satire that imagines a 21st-century Britain governed by a highly
A friend of a friend hosted an engagement party in a London hotel. Invitations had gone out six weeks beforehand, and no expense was spared. They had planned it to be an ultra lavish event to please even the most critical and spoiled of their friends. However, between the hours of 4 p.m. and 7
We were talking about war, the desert and God. In the early Seventies, one of our number, Christopher James, had been involved in serious fighting in the struggles to stop Yemeni-backed communist insurgents from destabilising Oman. Christopher was happy to pay tribute to everyone else, but evasive about his own service in the SAS. That
Everybody’s saying it, even though the latest research declares that only 6 per cent of the population is given to the habit. I mean saying an historic. Sir John Major, though a Knight of the Garter, is proud of his origins in Brixton and Worcester Park, but started the present vogue at Chatham House in
From October last year, it was compulsory for all London black cabs to accept payment by card. London cabbies aren’t always sunnily disposed towards Transport for London, but those I have spoken to since the move seem to welcome the ruling, and acknowledge that business has picked up since. There are, of course, plenty of
