To help out friends, I sometimes collect a boy from his primary school near Sloane Square. This part of London boasts the most expensive homes in Britain and the local families are served by a crop of ultra-pricey schools. The best known, Hill House, was founded in the 1940s by an eccentric army officer, ‘the
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I whispered, almost in tears, as the priest finished his horrible homily. Standing at the altar in front of a stained-glass window showing Jesus with his arms outstretched, this priest was telling us all off for what had happened in Dublin, three hours’ drive away. I suppose we expected a
When you’re planning Christmas, the big event is the easy bit. No, hear me out. It’s obviously a production – a feast! – more of an exercise in logistics than it is complicated cooking, making sure all the many elements come together at the correct moment. I’m not trying to underplay the amount of effort
My annual bout of CADDAD (Christmas Affected Doom, Depression and Despondency) struck early this year. It’s a terrible affliction about which I’ve written many times before and it knocked me flat in late September, just as the first mince pies and Christmas puddings appeared in the supermarkets. Stoicism being my middle name, I dug deep
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Garrick. Named after an 18th-century theatrical impresario, it was established in 1831 as a club where ‘actors and men of refinement and education might meet on equal terms’, and in the intervening years it has admitted members of other equally disreputable professions – lawyers, writers, surgeons, journalists.
Anyone who thought Gavin Henson, perma-tanned Welsh rugby three-quarter and one-time escort of Charlotte Church, was just an overhyped glamour boy should think again. He has revealed himself as one of more than 200 former players, including several Test players, involved in legal action against World Rugby and the English and Welsh unions, claiming levels
Q. I am a great admirer of Dr Jordan Peterson so am naturally inclined to want to discuss his ideas with others. Last week, however, the man next to me at my niece’s wedding took umbrage when I mentioned Dr Peterson’s name and that I was a fan. This fellow guest turned out to be
Swanage is a town torn from a picture book on the Isle of Purbeck: loveliness and vulgarity both. It is famous for fossils, Purbeck marble, a dangerous-looking small theme park, and Punch and Judy. My husband is very attached to Swanage, because it exists in a state of 1952 – in homage to this, it
The Prime Minister mentioned mayoral elections the other day and he pronounced them as though they were conducted by mouth in the month of May: May-oral. There is no doubt that this is an American pronunciation, though some Americans prefer MAY-uhr-uhl to may-OR-uhl. In British English it’s MAIR-uhl. The funny pronunciation has spread to electoral,
The same window sticks. I push hard and sometimes it gives, lets in a distant sea, a child’s laughter in the waves. Mostly I can’t decipher the songs on the locked baby grand. Death has stolen their keys. The metronome still works. I slide its weight to the end, watch it pole-vault back and fore
Past time, maintains the broken clock. It isn’t off, not by a minute. Without a tick, without a tock, Past time, maintains the broken clock. Twice every day, those still hands mock the present, but they’re never in it. Past time, maintains the broken clock, It isn’t off, not by a minute.
Beeston Castle, English Heritage event, 2023/1265 The castle is perched on a rocky sandstone cragabove a moat of weeds and shadow-fields of flint:a subterranean memory-bank of history and hurt. A banquet of burdock and wild boar is being servedto the fingertip-march of a minstrel’s plucked lute —though I am stationed in the silt-flushed basin below.
