Life

High life

High life | 21 June 2018

New York I write this on my last day in the Bagel, and it sure is a scorcher, heat and humidity so high that the professional beggars on Fifth Avenue have moved closer to the lakes in Central Park. Heat usually calms the passions, but nowadays groupthink pundits are so busy presenting fake news as

Low life

Low life | 21 June 2018

Homesick for England, family and friends, I flew back, and the next day went for a long walk with my brother. We’ve both had the same cancer, my brother and I, and we’ve both been chemically castrated. We attend the same oncology department, and we are both recovering. (In my brother’s case this is almost

Real life

Real life | 21 June 2018

Every day in every way we are paying for more and more. I realise this increasingly. Things we took for granted as free are added inexorably to the list of things we are charged for. And now we have rural parking charges, by which I don’t mean we are going to be charged for parking

More from life

The turf | 21 June 2018

On the famed Whitsbury gallops, as corn buntings and stonechats fluttered from the fence posts, a dozen of Marcus Tregoning’s team were stretching nicely. The sun reflected from the chestnut flanks of the filly Viva Bella. The handsome head of Moghram, a muscular Sir Percy colt owned by Hamdan Al Maktoum, stood out against the

Wine Club

Wine Club 23 June

Readers will, I’m sure, remember the excellent Merlot-rich Sang du Sanglier from Ch. de Fayolle that we offered here with FromVineyardsDirect recently. Well, crikey, the 2016 Ch. de Fayolle Blanc (1), its sister wine, is every bit as toothsome. A blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon (just a bit) from low-yielding, naturally farmed, herbicide-free vineyards

Tariq Ramadan and the integrity of French justice

For the last four months, Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan has been rotting in a French jail, like Jean Valjean. He stands accused of rape by several women who came forward during the #MeToo scandal. One says that in a hotel room in Paris in the spring of 2012, the world-renowned Swiss scholar of Islam “choked

Brexit has become England’s white whale

Brexit must happen. Of course it must, for the people have decreed it should and, in this instance, their command cannot, as it can be in other circumstances, be countermanded. That leaves ample room for argument over the precise shape of Brexit – for it turns out there are many kinds of Brexit – but

The true cost of the Stepford Students

It has become abundantly clear in recent years that becoming a Social Justice Warrior (SJW) is bad for your health. But recent developments in north America suggest that it is also very bad for your bottom line. It is now three years since the University of Missouri underwent a prominent bout of SJW-itis. On that

No sacred cows

This junk study proves nothing about helicopter parenting

An academic paper by a group of child psychologists caused a stir earlier this week. ‘Helicopter parenting is bad for children,’ was how the Times reported it, and other news outlets summarised it in the same way. Here was proof, apparently, that wrapping your children in cotton wool and limiting their exposure to risk is

Dear Mary

Your problems solved | 21 June 2018

Q. Being professionals in trade, we find ourselves increasingly being asked by friends, who could well afford to use our services, how to achieve certain things. They know we depend on these skills — which have taken years to learn and perfect — for our livelihood. What do you suggest is the best way to

Drink

That woman’s got me drinking

It is enough to make a man turn to drink. On a distinctly non-abstemious day, I was sitting in one of my favourite places on earth. It is not a great garden, merely a characteristically English one: roses, benign verdancy and the joyous sunshine of gentle summer. My dear friends have just finished restoring their

Mind your language

Iteration

‘They should say, irritation, not iteration,’ exclaimed my husband as a voice on the wireless spoke about men’s fashion and the promise of ‘a new iteration of softer suiting’. Suiting in itself is a comical word when found outside the technical pages of Tailor and Cutter. In that respect it belongs to the same family

The Wiki Man

Gastropolitics give us food for thought

An Iranian friend of mine recently brought me some gaz from Isfahan. Commonly known as Persian nougat, gaz is perhaps the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. The only thing to avoid is learning how it is made. Pistachio nuts are mixed with ‘honeydew’ collected from the angebin plant of the Zagros mountains, a