Life

Still Life

I’ve rekindled my love affair with England

Late spring. Sitting in the armchair in the living room, I was chilly and disconsolate. My middle daughter was seven-and-a-half months pregnant and unwell. The pregnancy had triggered two serious autoimmune disorders. She’d been successfully treated for thyroid cancer a few years before, but this new disease was attacking her lower spine; she was exhausted

Real life

How to spot a troublesome Airbnb review

The guest who thought our farm was in the town centre was very cross indeed. She got out of her car by the old fountain and stood hands on hips surveying the meadows sloping from the big old house towards the rugged mountains beyond. She was wearing knee-length khaki safari shorts, so you’d have thought

No sacred cows

Let straight white men write novels!

About 15 years ago, I tried to interest my literary agent in a state-of-the-nation novel set in 21st-century London. My model was Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe’s masterpiece about New York in the 1980s. I’d read Wolfe’s essay in Harper’s magazine called ‘Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast’ in which he urges ambitious young authors to

Sport

The sorry demise of Windies cricket

The tub-thumping atmosphere in the Long Room at Lord’s was so raucous late on Monday afternoon as India and England fought out the tightest of Test matches that it made a Millwall home game against West Ham seem like the Albert Hall. So a great triumph for Test cricket, yes? Well, up to a point.

Dear Mary

Food

Picture perfect: Locatelli at the National Gallery reviewed

I feel for Locatelli, the new Italian restaurant inside the National Gallery, whose opening coincides with the 200th anniversary of the gallery and a rehang which I can’t see the point of because I want to watch Van Eyck in the dark. Locatelli must compete with the Caravaggio chicken, which is really called ‘Supper at

Mind your language

Where did ‘husband’ come from?

‘Am I housebound?’ asked my husband as I was discussing with him the complicated history of the name for his role in life. ‘No, darling,’ I said. ‘You’re the one in the house who just is or lives there.’ Only later did I tell him that the word bond, behind the -band of husband, sank

Poems

My Worst Ever Place

The house I hatedhated me, gave mea precariously narrow landingat the top of stairs, so I fellinto intensive carefollowed by Neuro-Rehabilitationresidence where I pay little attentionto double vision, double incontinenceand a wheelchair, focusing on the dizzinesswhich suggested that brain and Imay not be keeping company. Occupational Therapists –Nonulia watches me make a cup of tea.She

Charlie

i.m. Charles Ferdinand Smyth, born 9 January 1865 at Stephen’s Green; died February 1871 of rheumatic fever 29 June 1876, Hokitika, South Island, New Zealand – All went in search of the donkey, Dandybear, & found the truant half way on the road to Kaneiri. The children ride on this animal on saddles of home

The turf

Labour is risking the future of racing

The only political party with a serious chance of winning office I will ever vote for again is the one which acknowledges that in all probability and at least for a while it will increase taxes. Every party piles up promises that they will be the ones to get Britain working again. But building power