There died last month the doyen of British motoring writers, an idiosyncratic, eloquent, deeply informed, erudite enthusiast: L.J.K. Setright. A bearded patrician, elegant and opinionated, intolerant of fools, mysterious and forbidding, his detestation of speed limits was as passionate as his fondness for strong Sobranie cigarettes (he died at 74). His style varied from the
If the English Premiership’s round-ball autumn has been imbued with a generally browned-off languor, it has at least been far more civil than the bad-blooded rancour of their ‘oval’ cousins. The Rugby Football Union spits more viperishly by the week at what it perceives as the derisive impertinence of the leading clubs. This month marks
Dear Mary… Q. I am an artist and will shortly be showing my latest works in a one-man show. I beg your advice on how I can circumvent the social difficulty which blights many private views — namely, what to do about having something to eat after the show? Clearly a two-tier system of those
Quaintly, you could say that what the BBC in its heyday used to call ‘this great summer of sport’ finally ends this weekend in Shanghai. It may be two weeks until we adjust the clocks to signal the closing-in of winter, but 2005’s summer calendar snaps shut tomorrow with the running of the final round
Dear Mary… Q. Your child of not super-rich parents (8 October) needs to be aware that, if his parents hand ownership of their house to him, for the transfer to be valid for tax purposes they would then have to pay a full rent to him, and they might not want or be able to
The newly released Zagat survey has just named the top ten most popular London restaurants and put Wagamama, a cheap noodle bar restaurant, at number one. So how come I’ve never been? Especially when you consider there are now 50 of them worldwide, 24 of which are in London, and a new one appears to
You don’t often see a large turbot these days. My guess is that the big ones, like most of the lobsters and crabs caught in our waters, go to Spain or France. The specimen which I saw in Paris earlier this year was being cut into fat steaks for sale at 90 euros per kilo,
Seeking to persuade Mrs Oakley to wager a bottle of Ledaig single malt on which of three wet sheep will be first up a windy escarpment tends to be as close as you get to racing when holidaying on the Isle of Mull. But one of the great blessings of the sport is its depth
A revitalised Scottish team will cause a heck of a bonny din at splintery auld Hampden this afternoon — olde tyme optimism. Ditto Northern Ireland at venerable Windsor Park. Neither are likely to qualify for next year’s World Cup finals, but England are, yet the preliminaries to their match at Old Trafford against Austria have
Dear Mary… Q. I am the only child of parents in their seventies who are not super-rich but who do own a house in Dorset worth more than the £265,000 one is allowed to inherit before the 40 per cent inheritance tax comes into play. Ideally they would hand ownership of the house over to
English soccer is in a tizz of self-recrimination. Not before time. This new autumn season has seen attendances drop alarmingly in the Premiership. Goals have dried up and so, correspondingly, has the excitement. Two–nil is now a goal glut. The mercenary players are overpaid, over-praised and over here, and the fans, we are told, are
Dear Mary… Q. Pyjama gape or not, aprons should not be worn by a gentleman. The pyjama gape correspondence originated in Aldeburgh and the solution lies no further away than nearby Leiston, where the renowned Volga Linen Company (www.volgalinen.co.uk, 01728 635020) has among its sublime products linen pyjamas whose tops reach the knees, which I
One back for Australia, even if it took an Italian trainer and a French jockey to do it for them. Loping round Newmarket’s pre-parade ring on Saturday in the shadow of Brigadier Gerard’s statue, the sun glinting on his massive shoulders, the deep-chested Starcraft looked immense. He stands 17 hands, and the white bandages on
‘Judo Al’ Hayes has died in Dallas, aged 76. My hearing the sad news coincided with a tumble of forgotten yesterdays as I watched last week, as part of ITV’s 50th birthday party, some evocatively grainy snatches of the all-in wrestling which used to clock up more than 10 million viewers on a midweek winter
Dear Mary… Q. Staying with English friends in the south of France (about whom I have written to you before) my hosts took me to a rather raucous fancy dress party. Being sartorially challenged, I opted for a very short belly-dancing skirt and a minimalist top. My fortysomething hostess went as a Seventies go-go dancer
The first barracuda to be caught in British waters was landed at Newlyn, Cornwall four years ago. This summer giant fin whales have been spotted off the Pembrokeshire coast. The evidence of these alien visitors may be attributable to global warming, or to changes in the flow of ocean currents, but it makes one wonder
‘A German joke,’ a former British ambassador once told me, ‘is no laughing matter.’ The Germans take their elections seriously, too. It has been no easy matter, in my day job for CNN, spraying an international audience with initials as I try to explain how the Red–Green coalition of the SPD and Joschka Fischer’s lot
The Ashes cricket series was unimaginably compelling from first day to last. At Lord’s on 21 July England began their challenge by bowling out the world champion Australians for just 190 to kick-start the turbulent rollercoaster, and in the following 54 days of beguiling intensity and speculation the whole cricket world — and far beyond
Q. I sympathise with B.M.F. (20 August). At a recent Proms concert, a superb performance of ‘Gerontius’ was ruined by a middle-aged woman continually fanning herself with her programme. It was not a hot night, and she was the only person in the hall doing so. She was very rude when someone tried to approach
Only twice in history — in 1926 and 1953 — have England regained the Ashes in the final Test match at the Oval. No knowing, of course, if 2005 will be the third time, for this is being written on the eve of this weekend’s nerve-racking conclusion to our heady cricketing summer. In 1893, Dr