Marriage

The older I get, the more Scrooge-like I become. I’m dyspeptic, misanthropic, curmudgeonly, parsimonious and unsentimental. Caroline, by contrast, is even-tempered, sweet-natured, charitable, generous and easily moved. Yet paradoxically, I love Christmas, whereas she regards it as a time of year to be endured rather than enjoyed. This inevitably leads to a number of arguments and, as with everything else connected with the festival, they’ve become ritualised. So here are the rows that are guaranteed to occur in the Young household at this time of year. The season always begins with a heated discussion about external lighting. My ideal is to go Full Chav, with a giant neon-lit Santa plastered

In his column last week, Rod Liddle suggested that an alleged fatwa by a Saudi Arabian cleric had said it was permissible to eat one’s wife when suffering from ‘severe hunger’ gave him (Rod) the go-ahead to eat his own wife. Not so, surely. In the Christian religion and, indeed, the secular law of the United Kingdom, one can have only one wife at a time. If one has only one wife, it would be quite wrong to eat her. Under Islam, one can have up to four. Obviously this generous provision creates ‘spares’. Until recently, British marriage law was hidebound by tradition, but, before the last election, Parliament voted

Our son, William, celebrated his marriage on Saturday. You would expect me to say that it was wonderful, sunny occasion. I do, and it was. I have been trying to work out why. The most important factor is something which parents can, fortunately, affect very little. Will was marrying a beautiful, kind and thoughtful woman, whom he loves; and she loves him. This mutuality, rather than any doctrine, is the main thing. Marriage occurs naturally in organised society and is not invented by religion. Religions only annex and defend it. Although my wife and I are believers — and so are Will and Hannah — I do not think religion

Pope Francis, is, according to Cardinal Walter Kasper – a Swabian formerly responsible for ecumenism – neither a traditionalist nor a liberal – “both of which categories have become rather timeworn and hackneyed” – but rather a radical who wants to advance a revolution of forgiveness. Well, that’s what Christians are kind of for, even if most of us fall rather short of the ideal. But though the liberal/trad categories may indeed be a bit hackneyed – possibly because they’re completely and utterly lost on the secular majority — it’s not to say that the old agendas aren’t still being fought over with gusto. And right at the top of

I have had many proposals of marriage recently via the internet, most of them coming from young ladies in Nigeria, Ghana, the DRC and so on. Some of them haven’t even asked for my bank details. I assume that request will come later. Here’s the best one, though. And also the most mystifying. Hello Dear one, Hello,You have a wonderful and charming look of which every man that knows something good must appreciate the good creature of the Almighty. I must say that you are an epitome of natural beauty and I would like to know you better and I hope to be your very good friend. Since the first

When Tom Hollander met Joan Collin on the set of The Clandestine Marriage the pair hit it off. In fact, they got on so well that Hollander attended the Dynasty star’s Christmas party alongside Conrad Black and William Hague, before receiving an invitation to stay with her in St Tropez. However, as Hollander writes in this week’s edition of The Spectator, their friendship took a turn for the worse when the Rev actor called Collins to confirm a date. Collins was out at the time of the call so she rang Hollander back and left a voicemail for him. ‘The next day I got a long voice message on my mobile. ‘Hi darling, it’s Joan here. I’ve