Serifos He went away to fight and the war lasted ten years. He missed his wife but he didn’t worry one bit. She was in love with him and she was known for her virtue. (Those were the days.) Sailing west he stopped in Serifos, a beautiful but rugged island in the Cyclades. Soon he
‘So what are your plans?’ said our gentle, civilised Airbnb host over a tray of tea and cake to welcome us into their perfect home. I outlined the highlights of our prospective three-day literary tour. ‘The Augustus John exhibition at the Salisbury museum; the Henry Lamb at Poole; Hardy’s cottage. And if we have time
‘Ah well, it can’t be helped,’ said the builder boyfriend. I call people who talk like that civilians. Nut jobs like me can’t process misfortune in such a way. He shouted and screamed for two days about the accident and then he just got over it. ‘Ah well, it can’t be helped,’ he said, after
Laikipia All across the north the ritual bulls have already been slaughtered. I am waiting for the invitation from our Samburu neighbours to set off on a walk into the forested hills with my boy Rider to visit the great thorn enclosures where thousands of youths are to be circumcised. Drought in the low
The changing of the guard at 10 Downing Street always creates opportunities for the commentariat. I don’t just mean it gives them something to talk about for the next week or two; it also provides a chance for reinvention and renewal. Suppose you have been a relentless critic of Brexit for the past three years,
The name Cameron Delport might not be immediately familiar, but his exploits last week could mean more for the future of cricket than the electrifying events of the World Cup final. Delport is a burly, well-inked British-South African from Durban, and a few days ago he smacked 129 off just 49 balls to steer Essex
Q. It was 10 p.m. by the time the canapés appeared and by then it was already too late. The well-oiled guests, including many old friends, were not drawn from the widest gene pool; many of the men had been to ‘school’ and there was a large Oxbridge contingent, of which I was one. I
The Goring is a tiny grand hotel near Victoria Station and the Queen’s garden wall. Victoria is not pleasant — traffic fumes —but this only makes the Goring more determined to be the grandest of all London’s tiny grand hotels. That it is in the wrong place — it should be in Mayfair in 1858
How might an oath lend its name in England to a religious extremist and in Spain to a moustache? That has been the claim for the German bei Gott as the origin of English bigot and Spanish bigote. In his Gatherings from Spain (1846), the great English traveller Richard Ford did not doubt the origin
