New York The search for the two Chechen terrorists in Boston was nothing compared with mine for new digs in the Bagel. And the knowledge accrued while cruising with estate agents the city that never sleeps — for example, did you know that New York has five million, two hundred thousand trees? April is still
The train driver was at lunch. The next train to depart, according to her blackboard, was 13.00. It was now 12.45. The miniature diesel locomotive and the row of blue carriages were empty in the station. Shut in his house on the far side of the lake, the lion, deeply troubled, was roaring his head
Such a tiny creature would not be any trouble, I decided. And so I got the idea, at the beginning of the winter, that it might be all right to leave a mouse in my garden shed. It was such a cute mouse with the twitchiest whiskers. It had burrowed into a sack of Chudleys
The long, intermittent debate about whether parents should be allowed to spank their children has erupted once again with the finding by an American research team that it doesn’t do children any harm provided it is tempered by love. Whether it does them any good is another matter, and it’s not really the point; for
The trouble with writing about people is their friends. Back when woolly mammoths roamed the earth and I was Crossbencher in the Sunday Express, I wrote admiringly about the burgeoning prospects of a young MP. He was of Dutch origin and I suggested that he might become the first Hollander to lead the British Labour
The highlight of the year I spent as a postgraduate at Harvard was a speech given by Tom Wolfe to the graduating class of 1988. His theme was the decline of Christianity in America and the extraordinary freedom that had given rise to. Until quite recently in American history, he argued, people’s personal behaviour had
Q. Last week on a plane from Heathrow I sat next to a very attractive man. We started talking and I could tell he liked me too. Unfortunately, although we established that we both live in London, the flight was not quite long enough to warrant an exchange of telephone numbers. Unfortunately he lives in
My last column discussed Lady Thatcher and drink. It is now time to move on to sex. But there is little to say. Hard as it may be for moderns to contemplate, she was uxorious. A million years ago, in her days in opposition, I was in the House having a drink with an elderly
In the sobriquet Iron Lady, isn’t lady too deferential for a mocking nickname? Its author, Yuri Gavrilov, hardly knew that in current English, lady is a genteelism when used by those who fear that if they say woman it will be taken as an accusation that someone is no lady. This has had the perverse
They have done this before, the two lovers, each believing the other is drowning – parting their lips as the salt water covers they smile at the precision of their timing. There is a simplicity in the bound hands: the skin’s shudder, the bubbles on blue lips which rise like tiny unheard songs, the strands
It was a few months ago, and I had just arrived in Philadelphia. My friend picked me up at the airport — one of those charming, civilised things people do when they live in a city that’s a sensible size. As I climbed into the car I furtively pulled an e-cigarette out of my pocket.
