In a few weeks’ time, a couple I have been friends with for the best part of 20 years will be holding a bat mitzvah for their daughter. Anyone who knows even a little about Judaism will know the importance of the event: a celebration for a girl reaching 12, and a great excuse for
Was it the sumptuous leather armchairs? Or the perfect teacups? Or the toothsome selection of custard creams and ginger nuts? I have never sat in a more quintessentially English workplace than the London office of Tata, India’s largest conglomerate. Travellers to India often remark that many Indians love British culture more than Brits do. Where
When my parents emigrated from India in the 1960s, they sought what might be called the ‘-British dream’: stability, opportunity and the chance of a better life in the world’s third-largest economy. So when I told my parents that I was moving to India for the same sort of reasons, they were shocked. India may
Oklahoma will always be a red state on the political map, but the colour goes deeper than that. Everything here was red: red earth, red brick, red dust, red rust. At Little Sahara State Park, 1,600 geologically anomalous acres of iron-rich sand dunes were pinky-orange, the colour of thousand-island dressing. The sitcom Friends had a
‘If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.’ Well, Mark Twain, I waited a couple of days and I liked the weather a lot: bright blue skies, warm sun and a cooling breeze off the Atlantic during a September weekend in Newport, Rhode Island. Two days is not long
Ooh, sir! Do you? At your age, sir? Well, yes. Revolting though it may seem, I still love New York. Every time I go there — as I did earlier this month — I fear I am not going to like it, but every time I fall in love all over again. I think it
Everyone thinks travel writing is a doddle. You soak up the sun for a couple of weeks and when you get home the words pour forth, dazzling the reader with wish-I-was-there images. Then you sit back and wait for the cheque to drop through the letterbox while planning your next safari or walk in the
Ten years ago next week, the tech-heavy Nasdaq stock exchange hit its lowest point ever, as the dotcom crash shuddered to an excruciating conclusion. With Facebook shares now approaching half their May offer price and debate raging over the role of banks in society, this is a good time to ask what we learnt from
Harriet Harman’s office reflects her status as the grande dame of British politics. Ensconced in a corner of Portcullis House, she enjoys two of the finest views in London, over both the Palace of Westminster itself and Parliament Square. As she ushers me in, the imposing effect is only spoiled by the fact that the
François Hollande is nothing if not a traditionalist. French governments of the left usually come to office promising to reject austerity and pursue a holy grail of growth, only to hit the buffers of economic reality on election. In 1936, the Popular Front sought to overturn the orthodoxy of its predecessors after the Great Slump
One hundred pages into his absorbing new memoir, written entirely in the third person, Salman Rushdie declares that ‘Friendship had always been of great importance to him,’ since so much of his life had been spent separated, physically and emotionally, from his own family. ‘Friends,’ writes Rushdie, ‘were the family one chose.’ The conceit of
The drawback to waging a global counter-terrorism campaign is that, just when you think you have one bunch of Islamist militants on the run, another one pops up to take its place. For all the breakthroughs chalked up by those prosecuting the war against al-Qa’eda, the movement has re-emerged in new guises in Somalia and
Jeremy Browne looks more like a young subaltern preparing to go to India in 1860 than a typical Lib Dem. He stands ramrod straight, his reddish hair has an officer-class cut. He is always impeccably dressed. Whitehall gossip has it that when he was first appointed to the Foreign Office, the officials couldn’t believe that
In the days before conference, a party leader is usually up to his ears in drafts of his speech, worrying how best to please the crowd. But last Monday, Nick Clegg wasn’t slaving away at his speech. He was at Chequers with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, discussing, according to one participant, a new
Divorce is something I have yet to experience personally but Dave’s reshuffle has set me up nicely for any future threat to my own nuptial bliss. Out of the blue comes the call. It’s Dave’s office. ‘We need to talk — can you come over?’ And better I come round the back way to 10
In Benghazi the ‘spontaneous protestors’ arrived with rocket-propelled grenades and killed the US ambassador. In Kabul the crowds chanted ‘Death to America’. American flags were torched from London to Sydney. But in Washington the Obama administration showed that they weren’t taking any of this personally. It wasn’t about them, but about an excerpt from an
The harvest is in, the smell of dried leaves is in the air, Parliament’s back in session, and pretty soon the 17-year-olds will start ringing: the university admissions deadline is approaching and someone will need to write their personal statements for them. Everyone who wants to go to university is required to fill in a
The Establishment Club reopens in Soho this week, and it is easy to see why. Peter Cook started the original club in 1961, when there was an unpopular Conservative government, led by a cabal of Old Etonians, presiding over a recession; and the Establishment Club’s Soho premises were at the centre of the satire boom
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published 50 years ago this month, effectively marked the birth of the modern environmental movement. ‘Silent Spring came as a cry in the wilderness, a deeply felt, thoroughly researched, and brilliantly written argument that changed the course of history,’ wrote Al Gore in his introduction to the 1994 edition. Mr Gore
Hong Kong isn’t what it was. Under British rule it was meek and mild, careful not to rock the boat, forever nervous about its future under China. The rich bought property in Chelsea and Vancouver, put their children into good schools and universities in Britain and America, and did whatever it took to get another
