In his days as Foreign Secretary Robin Cook once told me that every politician should have a spell as a racing tipster to teach him humility — he tried it for the Glasgow Herald. I am not sure it worked the full miracle in his case, but racing is a true leveller with triumph and
One of the downsides of getting older is witnessing your friends and acquaintances being honoured in various ways. I don’t just mean knighthoods and peerages, I also mind the little things — an entry in Who’s Who, for instance, or an honorary degree from a red-brick university. It’s reached such a point that I daresay
This is a big week for gays on both sides of the Atlantic. By the time you read this, the House of Commons will have voted to permit gay marriage, despite an angry revolt by a large number of Tory MPs; and in Texas the Boy Scouts of America may also have voted (less certainly)
One of my reasons for coming to Kenya was to visit Tango Maus, the farm of Spectator ‘Wild life’ columnist Aidan Hartley. I’ve read so much about this mystical place —the skirmishes with the local elephant population, the troublesome livestock, the Gunga Din-like farm manager — that I was dying to see it. And having
I went to a funeral last Saturday, a depressingly frequent occurrence at my age. But it was an exceptional funeral, not only because of its gloriously peaceful rural setting amid the still snow-flecked hills of north-west Hampshire, or because of the beauty of the service that took place in the tiny village of Tangley’s charming
I don’t just love jumping horses — I love the folk who train them and ride them and those who watch them doing it, too. Open the sports pages on Sunday or Monday and what do you get in the acres of newsprint devoted to football? A scowling Sir Alex Ferguson ranting that Manchester United
Before setting off for Kenya, where I’m spending six weeks helping The Spectator’s ‘Wild life’ columnist, Aidan Hartley, set up a school, I worried about the safety of my family. Would I be exposing my wife and four children to danger? I’d heard a lot of horror stories about violent crimes committed against the white
I am writing on what is known as Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. Or so the Daily Mail tells me. The newspaper claims that Blue Monday was invented by a psychologist called Cliff Arnall, who seven years ago identified the third Monday in January as the day on which people are
I was at a petrol station in Nakuru, a city in Kenya’s Rift Valley, when I experienced my first moment of genuine terror since arriving in Africa. I was standing in a queue, waiting to pay, when a crowd of about 500 locals suddenly invaded the garage forecourt. They were campaigning for one of the
The advent of freezing weather in Northamptonshire is making me worry about my ducks. I have eight of them of four different breeds now sitting on the base of a stone sculpture in the middle of my ornamental pond, some of them with their heads tucked under their wings, as if hiding from the world,
Punting at Kempton Park in winter I have one basic rule. Take a long hard look at anything Nicky Henderson is running before you consider backing anything else. His record at the Thameside track is extraordinary. But those who had taken the odds of 3–10 on his Tetlami in the novice chase on Saturday missed
Driving round Kenya, I’m constantly struck by the sheer number of schools. Every 500 yards there’s a hand-painted sign advertising the virtues of some ‘academy’ or other. The truly remarkable thing is that at least 10 per cent boast of teaching the ‘British curriculum’. The reason this is remarkable isn’t just because there’s no such
William Rees-Mogg, who has died, the Oxford-educated member of an old Somerset family, was widely seen as the archetypal ‘gentleman journalist’, but he aspired to be rather grander than that. Even before he became editor of the Times in 1967 he had upstaged his landowning forebears by buying himself an enormous 18th-century country house, Ston
I’m currently in Kenya with my wife and four children and have just returned from the coast where we spent four nights at the Serena Hotel in Mombasa. My only complaint is that all the DVDs in the Kids’ Club were pirate copies — a bit off, considering the hotel is owned by the Aga
We have now entered the New Year in which we know that everybody, with the exception of those who have not yet been born (like our future king or queen), will be one year older by the end of it. I have already passed that milestone this week, which means that I will be 73
It is all about how you impart bad tidings, I suppose, like the wife who told her husband one night, after the first drink: ‘The good news, darling, is that the airbag definitely works.’ Mrs Oakley and I have not only a grandson and five grand-daughters but also a grand-dog, Myla, who comes to stay
I’m currently in Kenya with my family where I’m planning to stay for the next seven weeks. The official reason is to help my friend Aidan Hartley set up a primary school in Laikipia, but I have another, less pious motive. Last June, Aidan arranged for me to give a speech at Pembroke, his children’s
At the time of writing, a few days after the school massacre in Connecticut, the National Rifle Association remains creepily silent. This normally loud-mouthed, blustering organisation has made no comment on the killings and has even taken down the Facebook page on which it was boasting at the time of having 1.7 million ‘likes’, meaning
One of the things we’ll have to say goodbye to in 2013, if the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has its way, is Asperger’s Syndrome. In the forthcoming fifth edition of the APA’s reference work, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), Asperger’s has been ‘declassified’, that is, it’s no longer recognised as a
I have a daughter called Freya, aged seven, who sometimes makes suggestions for this column but complains that I never take any notice of them. In particular, she is cross with me for never mentioning her dog Lena, a large mongrel that looks a bit like a black curly-haired Alsatian but has on the other