Gstaad I was very sad to read of Rupert Hambro’s death. I didn’t know him well, but first met him long ago, along with his younger brother Rick, also gone. They were both quintessential English gentlemen: handsome, kind and with a great sense of humour. Rupert invited me to lunch quite a few times, but
Around the time that poor M. Macron was casting televised aspersions on the AstraZeneca jab, I was offered one by Mme Michaud, our hardworking French village GP. Concerned about her bosoms, Catriona had visited for a routine appointment and while there had asked what the chances were of getting a Covid jab. By a stroke
‘Have you had your jab, Margery?’ said one Surrey lady to another in the queue for take-away coffee at the chintzy, shabby chic coffee shop. ‘Oh yes, I’ve had it for my country,’ said her friend. ‘I just can’t understand these people who won’t have the jab. I mean, how selfish…’ I looked at them
Laikipia In one of Kenya farmer Karen Blixen’s short stories, a character says: ‘I know of a cure for everything: salt water… Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea’. After two months on the Indian Ocean shore since Mum left us, I set off on the two-day drive back to the farm. At dawn in
According to a charity called Fight For Sight, 38 per cent of people who’ve been using screens more during lockdown believe their eyesight has deteriorated. I am definitely in that category. This time last year, I didn’t need reading glasses; now I do. When I’m working at my desk this doesn’t much matter, but it
Q. I hesitate to bring you this problem, but I suspect it is not that uncommon. Early in our very successful marriage we privately took photographs of each other which neither of us would like our children, or indeed anyone else, to see. They were intended for our old age and now that has arrived
Some friends claim to be making marks on the wall to count the days until liberation. Ah, the forgotten delights of restaurants and foreign travel. In one long nostalgic phone call, we kept present discontents at bay by discussing Paris. Although I have partaken of three-rosette meals in the capital of gastronomy and was never
If I ever again accompany my husband to a medical conference in Spain, and want to tell my hosts that I am embarrassed (as he often makes me), I should not say embarazada, for that word means ‘pregnant’, which at my age would be unusual. Such false friends can add to the gaiety of foreign
I wish I’d gone to Icelandwith Auden and MacNeiceto feed my brain on silenceor talk of war and peace. I wish I’d seen Craiglockhart under a Scottish moonand talked about the slaughterwith Owen and Sassoon. But I was a Belfast studentwith Heaney and his clan.I never got to talk at all –one had to be
I was once asked by a previous editor of the Times how to increase sales of the paper. I was slightly more circumspect, but the thrust of my argument was: ‘Don’t bother with all that news and opinion malarkey — just teach more people how to solve cryptic crosswords.’ My argument was simple. There are
