Who says the leisure class is no more? On the contrary, as a recent weekday visit to the new spiritual heart of Britain revealed to me, it is very large indeed. Of course, the modern leisure class is not necessarily very high on the registrar-general’s scale of social classes from I to V, but that
Why do I now find that I, one of the BBC’s most persistent critics, feel the need to defend the organisation that I have attacked so many times in the past? Because for all its faults I would rather that Britain had a public-service broadcaster than that the airwaves were sold to the fattest cheque
‘We just want to ask people a few questions,’ we said, innocently clutching our pollster’s clipboards. The GI didn’t know whether to laugh or give us a slap. ‘You’re out of your heads. Don’t even think of leaving the Palestine Hotel. I’ve been in every kind of war situation you can imagine, and this is
Mmmm. Got lovely new mini-break brochure: Pride of Britain: Leading Country House Hotels of the British Isles. Marvellous. Going through all the pages one by one imagining Daniel and me being alternately sexual and romantic in all the bedrooms and dining-rooms.Bridget Jones’s Diary Last weekend my husband and I went on a mini-break to Majorca.
To the romantic, Malta smells of thyme and fig; to the cynic, tar and goat – but, whatever a traveller’s disposition, he can’t deny that the country’s place in Mediterranean history is unique. Malta’s past is bold and bloody. In 1530 the emperor Charles V gave the Knights of St John their home after they
Another summer over and, once again, the question forms in my mind: where not to go on holiday next year? It seems a silly question – for the list, surely, is endless. There are all those places which have simply nothing worth seeing. The homes of light industry and flyovers, with no distinguishing architecture, scenery
When I return to Kenya, this is the true story I’m going to tell my muckers over a round of welcome home Tuskers. In London, in the fair postcode of W12, I use a web caf
If Australia, as a nation, is negotiating late adolescence, cocksure but fragile, striving to establish its identity, then New Zealand is a child: clear-eyed, blemish-free, with a steady, candid gaze. My introduction to this gigantic adult playground came by way of a promotional video, shown by Air New Zealand on the flight from London to
There is rust on the griddle of the barbecue, dust on the shoulder of the Pimm’s bottle and must in the air in the summerhouse, where the cushions and the picnic rugs are damp. Each day, dusk limps in earlier and earlier, and it can’t be long before the spirits start to go as flat
One of the most amusing broadcast moments of the early 1990s was a radio debate between the painter Patrick Heron and various citizens of St Ives. The subject was the proposal to build a new art gallery in the town. Several angry Cornish voices were to be heard going on about a swimming pool –
For all the millions of words written about al-Qa’eda since the 9/11 attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked – the role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahedin of the 1980s into the roving Islamic terrorists of today. Many writers and reporters have traced al-Qa’eda and other terror groups’ origins back
They’re playing rap music in the jewellery department at Christie’s South Kensington. In T.M. Lewin, the Jermyn Street shirtmakers, you can dip into a fridge by the cufflinks counter and have a frozen mini-Mars while you are leafing through the chocolate corduroy jackets. But who is left to mourn these things? In the old days,
Just after David Hill’s appointment as the new Downing Street press chief, I wrote a profile of him for the Daily Mail. In this article, I revealed that Hill was a superb amateur rock vocalist, who had not only sung in several major venues across London, but had also appeared in the musical Hair. But,
According to a survey reported last weekend in the Independent on Sunday, almost all homosexuals are barking mad. I am using the politically correct term ‘barking mad’ so as not to incur the wrath of the mental-health pressure groups, all of which become psychotically incensed and even violent when they read of mad people being
Leonardo’s ‘Madonna of the Yarnwinder’, stolen the other day from the Duke of Buccleuch, is the painting that changed my view of civilisation. I know it quite well, because one of my sisters-in-law used to live just up the road from Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, where it hung until it was pinched. Whenever I stayed
Paris Within the next few months, Jacques Chirac’s illegitimate son will turn 18 and the French press will face a dilemma. Do they celebrate his majority on the front page of Paris Match? Or do they keep it as hush-hush as they have in the past out of courtesy, respect for a statesman’s private life
Andrew Gimson says Gerhard Schr
It is twilight in Sardinia. The sun has vanished behind the beetling crags. The crickets have momentarily stopped. The machine-gun-toting guards face out into the maquis of myrtle and olive, and the richest man in Europe is gripping me by the upper arm. His voice is excited. ‘Look’ he says, pointing his flashlight. ‘Look at
A lesson is learnt. Good music, as we hear it, tends to be ours and ours alone. But bad music is everyone’s: we all suffer together. Last month I related the harrowing tale of a recent family holiday in St Ives, where my girlfriend and I, while not buying beach balls in a tourist-tat emporium,
We got word that our house in London was infested with fleas as we drove north on holiday in glorious weather through the borders into Scotland. Sid, who very kindly and conscientiously looks after our cats while we are away, sent a series of increasingly alarmed text messages, in which he informed us that he