To the grand Herrera house on the upper east side of Manhattan for lunch in honour of Lord and Lady Linley. David Linley is over here to receive an award for his designs, which even a rube like myself where furniture is concerned finds wonderful. Princess Margaret’s son is talented, but he’s also a very
An hour earlier I had stepped off a plane from Dublin and I was three-quarters deaf in one ear. I had a drink in the bar at Boisdales Canary Wharf and a gander at the seating plan. Fourteen to a table. I was on table 18. I went up the stairs. Only one person was
Before I go any further, I would like to make clear that no animals were harmed in the making of this column. You might think that goes without saying, but I don’t take anything for granted when a woman I know has just been censured by the RSPCA for not providing her horses with a
Kenya It’s a long time since I thought of Thaddee, our Kigali stringer when I was covering Rwanda for Reuters. I remembered him because a recent fashion in western universities is the revision or even denial that a genocide against the Tutsis occurred in Central Africa in 1994. In recent months academics and some journalists
I thought that this week I might write about memory loss, but couldn’t remember if I’d written about it last week. Then I remembered that I had written about it, not in The Spectator but in the current issue of the Oldie magazine of which, if I remember correctly, I am the editor. I wrote
I had thought that my days of being approached by reality show producers hoping to put together a cast of D-list celebrities were behind me. Apparently not. A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by the makers of The Jump, a Channel 4 programme in which assorted ‘personalities’ try their hands at various Alpine sports,
Q. Success has come to me in later life with an unfortunate side effect. Since my career has taken off, I cannot see my friends as much as I used to, no matter how dearly beloved they might be. Moreover, on recent occasions when I have managed to see some old friends, it was obvious
Semper eadem. There is some basement in a Mayfair street that is forever France. It is not far from the American embassy, a strong candidate for the all-time monstrous carbuncle award. Bad enough that it should ever have been built: worse still, some ‘architects’ want to preserve it. Its menacing hideousness has made a significant
Joey Essex is a celebrity who appeared in the ‘scripted reality’ programme The Only Way is Essex, named not after him but the well-known county. He is 24, born in Southwark, and his main attractions are good looks, cheerfulness and stupidity. He claims never to have learnt to tell the time or to blow his
The imagined day includes sunshine and shopping And people saying Yes and being on my side. There’ll also be traffic and occasional drizzle So I know I haven’t died.
About four years ago, an irate father in Minneapolis walked into his local Target shop with a complaint. He wanted to know why they were sending his daughter, who was still at school, vouchers for baby clothes and cots. Were they trying to encourage her to get pregnant? When they telephoned to apologise a few
