Ben Schott is the author of Schott’s Miscellany and Schott’s Almanac.
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This week’s Book Club podcast is Ben Schott. The author of the world- (or downstairs-loo-) conquering Schott’s Original Miscellany returns with Schott’s Significa, a deeply reported and constantly surprising book in which he uses the private languages of various communities – from gondoliers to graffiti writers and from Swifties to sommeliers – as a way
‘How would you like your hair cut?’ ‘In silence.’ So goes the ancient joke. My answer, however, is ‘at home’. You see, this week marks the 15th anniversary of having my hair cut in my Highgate flat by the great Jane Davies, peripatetic barber to London’s loucher gentry. (Just as Jeeves is not a butler,
‘How are you bearing up?’ ‘Is everyone terrified?’ ‘What’s the mood?’ These are the questions concerned family and friends are kindly asking about New York City which, according to my armchair epidemiology, is about ten days behind Italy and ten days ahead of Britain. It would be reckless to describe things as calm, not with
The globe (Golden and otherwise) has rightly fallen h-o-h for Olivia Colman who, before The Crown, The Favourite and Peep Show, had an early role as Bev in the ‘Bev-Kev’ ads for AA insurance. But I was there at the very beginning, when she starred opposite her husband-to-be in a 1995 Cambridge production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Table Manners,
Much has recently been written about the incumbent Commons Speaker, from (vigorously denied) allegations of bullying to (less vigorously denied) suggestions of Brexit-foxing chicanery. And to call John Bercow a ‘Marmite politician’ is to state the obvious. A little less obvious is his idiosyncratic style of address — the bizarre collision of a Dickensian clerk
You’ll be relieved to learn my penguin is back. ‘How long was it gone?’ you ask. About six months. ‘And sorry, it’s a real penguin?’ Actually, no. Here’s the story: back in 2005, I was staying at the 60 Thompson Street Hotel in Manhattan. On my first afternoon in town I went for a stroll
‘Christmas Eve in Mayfair, Jeeves! There’s nothing in heaven to top it. Even with the terror of eleventh-hour shopping for the gang Travers.’ ‘Indeed, sir.’ ‘But we can’t pitch up at Brinkley Court tomorrow bereft of g., f., and the other one.’ ‘Myrrh, sir? No, sir.’ ‘I fear I’m both a little later and much
I have, for utterly explicable reasons, not been asked to guest-edit Radio 4’s Today this Christmas. Had I, though, I would have revived an idea first suggested, I think, by Tony Benn. Everyone loves the Shipping Forecast. But the weather forecast? That’s a different kettle of Michael Fish. The weather is rarely read, it’s emoted. ‘I’m sorry
Since it’s That Time Of Year, I have a quick parlour game suggestion: ‘Copy & Paste’. At any time during a meal, or long weekend, when someone does or says something of note, another can point to them and say ‘Copy’. Then, whenever anyone points to that person and says ‘Paste’, they have to repeat
I was drinking in the bar of Manhattan’s Nomad Hotel when in snuck The Most Seen Human Ever To Have Lived. This is an old puzzle: who is the most ‘observed in the flesh’ individual in history? Since we’re discounting depictions (paintings, photographs, films), it has to be someone alive in the jet age with
The Secret Service said it would investigate Donald J. Trump’s longtime butler over Facebook posts laced with vulgarities and epithets calling for President Obama to be killed. — New York Times, 12 May 2016 I had only just risen from a deep slumber, when in shimmied Jeeves with the cup that cheers. ‘Does the day
Killing time in a Heathrow first-class lounge, I notice how many men adopt an unmistakable ‘first-class lounge’ persona. They stand like maquettes in an architect’s model (feet apart, shoulders squared, defining their perimeter) and bellow into mobiles like they’re the first person ever to need ‘rather an urgent word’ with Maureen in HR. Along with
I’ve just been reunited with my magic umbrella for the fourth time in a decade. Hewn from oak by Swaine Adeney Brigg, this umbrella was a wildly generous 30th-birthday present from my old friend (and mutual best man) Aster Crawshaw. It was almost immediately purloined from the cloakroom of Joe Allen’s in Covent Garden. I
Flying home to New York, I noticed a disturbing innovation in pre-flight cabin announcements. After the welcomes, exhortations, and promotions the purser itemised the number of passengers (205) and crew (12) on board. Presumably, this is for the ‘black box’ recorder — so the correct complement of dental charts can be assembled should gravity win.
To see Schott’s Spectator Almanac, please click here: Schott’s Spectator Almanac [PDF]