Gstaad Back in 1975 Adam Fergusson, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, published a very important book with a very apt modern title, When Money Dies. It was about the nightmare of Weimar hyperinflation, something our so-called leaders might well think about, which of course they will not. We are so dumbed-down by
A kindly old charge nurse once took me aside after I’d appeared before a psychiatric hospital’s disciplinary committee accused of drunken behaviour. ‘Get yourself a good woman, old son,’ he counselled. ‘That’s what I did. Then you can take her to the pub, have a nice conversation, and learn to drink in a civilised fashion.’
Golden corn spread out on the road; women washing in rivers; pots and baskets and sugar cane balanced on heads; a dead man in his best clothes being carried to his pyre; goats, bullocks, monkeys everywhere; baby elephants ambling through traffic… After a week of it, I turn to my guide Rajai and announce somewhat
Juba In the run-up to this week’s referendum on Southern Sudan’s future, I flew to Juba with a bottle of Bushmills. The whiskey was for Dan Eiffe. When Sudan’s southern Christian rebels were on the brink of defeat, it was Dan who turned the war around. He has saved countless thousands from hunger. And he
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most militant trade unions have education reformers in their sights. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most militant trade unions have education reformers in their sights. A month of industrial action is due to begin at the end of March, culminating in a series of demonstrations to coincide with
Q. A friend gives regular dinner parties with all the potential to be brilliant events. She knows wonderful people and always has an interesting mix. She has a flat in Chelsea. She is a beautiful, stylish and generous woman but she rarely gets the food on the table before 10 p.m., by which time people
Now that we are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version of the Bible, I wonder if we can dispense with the notion that it has greatly influenced the shape of the English language. Macaulay once claimed that if every other book perished, the Bible ‘would alone suffice to show the whole extent’ of
The building is somewhere on the Pembrokeshire coast, the only one in the world, and I have never managed to find it. It is the Church of St Elvis, commemorating the sixth-century Elvis (or Aelfyw) of Munster, famous only for baptising St David and for giving a name to several generations of Presleys. I have
