New York A Brooklyn-born rapper by the name of John Forte had a business idea of sorts about eight years ago. It was one of those get-rich-quickly schemes that, alas, work most of the time, hence the reason so many people are out of it most of the time. He flew to South America, bought
On our last evening in Cairo we were joined for dinner in the hotel restaurant by a local businessman who liked to socialise with the English tourists. He drew up the chair beside mine. The chair on his other side was vacant. The amplified music was too loud to permit general conversation across the table
A 2,000-year-old thoroughfare, St Martin’s Lane, and certainly one of my favourite places; contender, any time of year, for the world’s most festive location. On Saturday afternoon, a carnival of mad shoppers, confused sometimes, crossing roads without looking; arguing, pointing, dashing this way and that, laden down and worn out or grinning and just holding
The clatter of hooves in the stable yard, the smell of the work riders’ bacon butties drifting in the air. Warmly wrapped trainers and bloodstock agents scratching at their catalogues. Horses breezing in pairs down the Kempton straight in the misty early morning. When CNN sent me out last Friday to see what effect the
‘Daddy, there’s something I want to ask you,’ said Sasha, my five-year-old daughter, as she was eating her supper. ‘Yes darling?’ ‘Is Father Christmas real?’ This is a question that every parent will be asked sooner or later and my friends are divided about how you should respond. Children will eventually learn that the universe
Q. I am godmother to a dear eight-year-old boy whose parents are separated. Every so often I try to see the little chap by inviting him to lunch in a smart restaurant for a treat. However the last two times that I have done this his father has trumped me by coming too and insisting
Dot Wordsworth wades through clichés Clichés gather on the tide and stick on the shingle of daily life like tarred bladder-wrack. A curious species of cliché sets a stereotyped pattern, into which words may be fitted to taste. A particularly annoying example, because it has pretensions to humour, is exemplified by: ‘The words door, horse
It’s not always a good idea to read certain books when you’re too young. At school it didn’t occur to any of us that Brave New World was meant to be a bad place — it seemed like a utopian fantasy world to me. Advice to writers: if you want to alarm teenagers with the
