Ah, spring! The spring of our frostbitten age. At the Polish Club in London, a wonderful place studded with portraits of Polish patriots who have fought and sacrificed for the West’s freedom. In this beautiful and heroic setting, your High life correspondent gave a speech about what it’s like writing for The Spectator, with some
Spectator Life’s third birthday party was a glamorous affair. It had paps, pop stars and Pippa. One went in and waiting at the top of the stairs were Spectator Life’s editor and deputy editor, super-dazzlers both, offering their cheeks to be kissed. We drank Bellinis. There is a new economic theory which claims that people
After I phoned the Aviva call centre for the ten thousandth time, a girl called Adele had to sort it in the end. If she hadn’t, I would have climbed on to the roof of the House of Commons in an outfit made of Lycra, waving a banner bearing the legend ‘Drivers For Justice!’ The
I’ve been trying to think of a good football analogy to describe the battle between the two main parties as the general election approaches. One suggestion is the second leg of a Champions League game, with the Conservatives having won the first leg by one goal to nil. If we assume that the Tories are
It’s April. It’s spring. The daffodils and the cowslips are in flower. The birds are chirping merrily. But where are the tortoises? There were two of them, a big one called Alice and a small one called Gertrude. They have been in my care since last summer when a friend, their owner, moved from her
Q. For ten years, I have made a reasonable freelance income working from home. During this time my husband has gone out to an office to work, leaving home in the early morning. Now my husband has announced that he is going to retire and will be at home with me all day. I feel
For many years, the Central American republic of Guatemala had a grievance against the United Kingdom. It claimed sovereignty over British Honduras, then a colony of ours. Eventually, all that died down. Calling itself Belize, British Honduras became independent and showed no desire to join Guatemala. Opposing colonialism could earn a plaudit from the sillier
Married to a public-school man (I almost said boy) for many a long year, I can’t bring myself to disqualify politicians for that crime alone. But during last week’s party leaders’ debates I did detect the tang of the Shell, as I think they call upper forms at Westminster, when I heard Nick Clegg say
In the late 1980s, the parks service in the United States were concerned about the deterioration of the stonework on the Lincoln Memorial. So they asked the maintenance staff why the stone was decaying. The crew explained that they used high-power sprays every fortnight to clean the masonry. The water penetrated cracks and joins, weakening
