Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2026 i The Oldie

Simon Berry (p16) was Chairman of Berry Bros & Rudd. The company, founded in 1698 at 3, St James's Street, is still there today. You can join Simon for a wine tour of Bordeaux's Right Bank – see page 84. Rachel Johnson (p19) is a presenter on LBC radio. She was editor of The Lady, 2009-12. Her books include Notting Hell, Winter Games and Rake's Progress: My Political Midlife Crisis. John Humphrys (p22) presented the Today programme, 1987-2019. He presented the Nine O'Clock News, 1981-87. He was the host of Mastermind, 2003-21. Mary Killen (p28), our beauty and fashion correspondent, is married to Giles Wood, our Country Mouse (p33). Together, they wrote The Diary of Two Nobodies and Country Life: A Story of Peaks & Troughs.…

It's only five minutes since we had last Christmas. It's insane. It comes around so fast, there's no point taking down the fairy lights, Only just had Hallowe'en. Pumpkins? What's that all about? And we'll have Easter eggs in the shops before you can say chocolate buttons. The price of chocolate! It's daylight robbery. Same at Christmas. Two hundred for a Norfolk turkey!! What do they do – send a taxi for it? Give us a break. What's the point of sprouts? What IS the point? And let me ask you one question - ever met someone who wants a slice of Christmas cake after all that pudding and mince pies? Forget it. Course, Christmas is for the kiddies. That's what the vicar said, unless I'm very much mistaken. And…

A few minutes’ walk from King's Cross, Euston and St Pancras lies a fourth magical British railway terminus. Here you'll find trains hurtling into north London tunnels, shooting over a Derbyshire viaduct – and chuff-chuffing through Putnam in upstate New York. The difference is that these trains are a lot smaller than the ones at King's Cross. For this is the Model Railway Club (MRC) – the biggest model-railway club in Britain (with 300 members) and the oldest in the world. The year 2025 was the 200th anniversary of the first train in the world, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which opened on 27th September 1825. Well, the Model Railway Club isn't far behind. Founded in 1910, it's celebrating its 115th anniversary in 2025. To salute the anniversary, I'm being…

My grandfather William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) cast a long shadow. He died 60 years ago, on 16th December 1965. For years, I refused to talk about him or read his excellent books. As an oldie, I mind things so much less; old wounds have healed and disappeared. Now I can remember with delight sunny days at the Villa Mauresque - playing on the rocks behind the house with my brother, Julian; being taught to swim in the pool at the Grand Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat by the dazzling Pierre Gruneberg; and luxuriating in the Mauresque's heavenly gardens. I would gaze in wonderment at the exotic carp with streaming tails and fins, swimming in narrow, landscaped ponds, and enjoy the scent of sun-baked leaves and herb and the sounds of chirping insects.…

At Christmas, this mouse likes to remember the great G K Chesterton (1874-1936), poet, writer of detective fiction, spinner of paradox, essayist and old Catholic grumbler. A speciality of his was Christmas. Every year, it seems, he wrote a new essay on the subject. His mission was to attack the way Christmas was celebrated in the modern world. For Chesterton – and for everyone else who lived at the time – the 1910s and ‘20s, with their tramcars, aeroplanes, electricity and wireless telegraphy, were exhaustingly modern. Many of his moans and whinges are familiar to us today. He hated the way Christmas celebrations started months before the festival itself, reserving peculiar scorn for magazines: ‘The editors of the magazines bring out their Christmas numbers so long before the time that…

Do you want the good news first, or the bad? The latter is always the more interesting – so let's get the good news over with. Between 2005 and 2019, the mortality rate in the first year after a heart attack declined in England and Wales very steeply, from 23 per cent to 14 per cent. The question is – why? According to an analysis of the 852,912 cases recorded to have occurred in those years, about two thirds of the improvement was caused by improvements in medical treatment - principally drug therapy (statins, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors) and stenting. The authors of the study were not able to explain the other third of the improvement, but of course some explanation must exist. Not only was survival improved, but the chances…

When I was a boy, in the early 1950s, my family lived in a crescent. The house opposite was owned by Old Mr Mordue, as he was known to all the neighbours. No one knew his first name, nor did anyone want to. Old Mr Mordue had one passion in life, and that was growing roses. He was a very good rose-grower, and often won prizes for his blooms. In those days, the Co-operative Dairies still used horses and milk carts for their daily deliveries. The horses were smart animals, usually white, and nicely turned out. Each horse and milkman had a morning run and a well-worn routine, as they wound round the streets and housing estates, in all seasons. Our milk horse would stop every 10 or 20 yards,…

There is a school of thought, to which I often subscribe, that sometimes it is just better not to know. That might sound odd coming from an ‘educator’ whose whole raison d’être is to banish the dark and lead children into the light. But we all know that sometimes the light can hurt our eyes. Thomas Gray did not say, ‘Ignorance is bliss’. He said that ‘where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise’, and there is a wealth of meaning added by those often deleted words. I think particularly of teaching children about mental health. I am all for banishing the stigma previously felt by those suffering from depression or any other type of mental illness, but children can be over-informed. And evidence is beginning to emerge that…

Modern technology My dentist told me I needed a new rotary toothbrush. I brought the pretty box home and spread out its multiple components on the kitchen table, with the pamphlet written in Korean English. The device had three different heads and seven settings, and the blurb recommended that it be controlled by an app on my mobile phone. An app! It's just a frigging toothbrush! After some struggle, I managed to attach a brush head to the vibrator, found the hidden on/off switch and was rewarded by noise and whirring. I needed to go out, but my wife was using my old Audi. I found her car keys and cautiously approached her new Volvo electric hybrid. Finding no keyhole, I realised the car had already unlocked itself on my…

Trump's threatened $5 billion lawsuit over Panorama's brazen splice was a diversion that got everyone agonising about the BBC – again. ‘I urge Brits of every stripe to repudiate the monstering of the BBC,’ cried Tina Brown in her Substack diary, Fresh Hell, ‘and defend its enduring values to the death!’ The BBC was already desperately parading not its enduring values, but its inclusivity: ‘It's our BBC!’ The slogan grates on everyone. It's the airwaves’ version of ‘See it, say it, sorted.’ Andrew Neil told Kate McCann on Times Radio, ‘When the BBC licence fee was introduced, Lenin was still in the Kremlin.’ True – but that was just wireless. There was no TV licence until 1946, when it cost £2. Radio, hurray, has been free since 1971. The BBC…

Old habits die hard but, in our house, one's finally bitten the dust. Every December, in a flush of kitsch enthusiasm, ‘A Christmas Gift for You’ was ceremonially slapped on the turntable. The room was filled with tinkling bells and slightly over-eager seasonal songs, from Phil Spector's sixties roster. ‘Winter Wonderland’ by Darlene Love. ‘Sleigh Ride’ by the Ronettes. Memories of kind aunts and record tokens. But what felt nostalgic and dependably joyful eventually seemed grating and sugary. We still had a yearning for a festive record. And, if you know the feeling, you'll be cheered to discover this grand tradition is still firmly up and running. Boundless options await. One such is The John Fahey Christmas Album (1991) by the dazzling American acoustic guitarist who gives ‘Little Drummer Boy’…

Like most small gardeners, in the past few months we have enjoyed a record crop of fruit from our trees: apples, plums, including the wild bullaces, figs (for the first time in 20 years) and hundreds of quinces. We don't have any walnut trees, but they too have yielded a rich harvest this year, reportedly three times larger than usual in Somerset. However, the walnut crop in California has also shown a significant increase, and it is those nuts that most of us will be buying and eating at Christmas. For home-growing, Broadview is the most popular variety. Two-year-old trees, about four feet tall, can be bought now from Pomona Fruits in Essex and should start cropping in three years. The tree is self-fertile; if more than one is grown,…

Dig into the history of most of the sports we enjoy in this country and you will encounter wealth. Cricket, tennis, badminton and rowing were initially the privilege of those endowed with leisure and cash, not to mention access to enough acres to play in. Even sports with more democratic genesis, such as horse-racing, football and golf, were ultimately codified and colonised by those with deep pockets. There is one sport that was definitively not born of money. When the British Open Championship begins on 15th January on the court at the Queen's Club in west London, nobody could suggest the sport of rackets owed its birth to a little toff picking up the ball and running with it across a public-school field. This game was first invented by reprobates…

Our digital mobile-phone networks are far from perfect, despite the claims of Ofcom and the network-providers that there is national coverage. If a company draws your attention to its excellent performance, always look for what it is not telling you. Assume it is using the same technique that conjurors employ to avoid being found out: misdirection. So Royal Mail claims it has improved delivery times. But it doesn't mention that most letter boxes are now emptied at 9am, rather than at the end of the day. That's misdirection. Look at the claims of mobile-phone companies for their digital networks. O2 boasts 99-per-cent coverage of the UK, which sounds great. And it is endorsed by Ofcom, which also sounds good. Let's look at what they don't say. Ofcom reports only what…

Christmas means presents, but birds can provide presents any time. In April, I visited one of the growing number of sporting estates whose owners see the privilege of ownership inseparable from targeted conservation, with gamekeepers as conservation managers. In the case of my Hampshire host – who, aside from public duties, is a consummate naturalist, exemplified by his wildlife photographs (Instagram: c.a.h.w) – stone curlews have been enabled to breed through an agricultural policy bolstered by predator control. The invitation to view this rare bird (365 UK pairs) was my visit's purpose. That things did not turn out as expected proved spectacularly beneficial. The first surprise was when we arrived from the station. A glance at the side mirror found a one-legged jackdaw perched there. Having been nursed through injury,…

IN COMPETITION No 326 you were invited to write a poem called Wrapping. It wasn't all Christmas, although Caroline Wilson summed up the seasonal chore: ‘Having wrapped up our presents which look rather shabby/ We pour a stiff sherry which leaves us less crabby.’ Veronica Colin, seeing her Christmas wrapping discarded, mused, ‘Next year I'll use newspaper, rough garden twine./ If challenged, I'll say it's postmodern design.’ Claudette Evans, wrapping up warm, found that ‘By November I'm half insulation, half optimist,/ By January I'm practically upholstered!’ John McTavish celebrated a New Zealand Christmas by the sea. Anthony Young's wrapper was the artist Christo. Jayne Osborn considered swaddling babies, and Ted Lane pharaohs. Sylvia Fairley unwisely vinyl-wrapped her car. Basil Ransome-Davies even stretched the title to rapping. Commiserations to them and…

January is the traditional month for a reset, when we hope to become a little healthier, wealthier and wiser after our seasonal excesses. Oldies are experienced enough to know how short-lived New Year's resolutions can be… here are some tips that might just help our health, pockets and brains. Gyms can be sweaty and intimidating for oldies - so instead book into a spa or a wellness retreat, even if just for the day, or a treatment. It might give you the boost to start taking those extra daily steps. Explore the numerous alcohol-free tipples now available, from wines and beers to delicious concoctions involving ginger and other spices to perk you up. Make dry January less dismal - and less expensive. Next, rev up the brain. Invest in a…

Though old ladies are immensely tiresome – complaining non-stop about foreigners and foreign food, vicars with moustaches, and policemen wearing glasses (‘What chance would they have against a determined assailant?’ as I once heard Patricia Routledge ask), here is a top tip. If you want to whizz through an airport, find an old lady in a wheelchair and push her about. This was my gambit the other day when, for reasons too boring to enumerate, I needed to travel from Birmingham to Amsterdam. I'd rashly volunteered to look after Bobo, 93, a relative of my bride and an escapee from the twilight home. The consort she really wanted was Bear Grylls, with whom she is obsessed. She had a blue badge, needless to say, so we parked for free near…

My favourite day of the year is 27th December. Christmas is over, Boxing Day is done, and, if you have planned it properly, 27th December can be all yours. No visitors, no emails, no phone calls. A day to yourself to do as you please, finishing up the leftovers (the leftovers, in my experience, somehow tastier than the original thing) and dipping into those books you've been given to decide which you are going to keep on the bedside through January and which need to go straight into the charity box or the re-gifting drawer. My second-favourite day is 24th December. In my late teens in the late 1960s, I got to know the great Iain Macleod, One Nation Tory and mentor to many of my generation of aspiring politicians.…

WHAT IS the Lunch Club? Oxford University is home to many clubs – and, allegedly, lost causes. This December, two Oxford dons’ clubs celebrate their centenary. The coincidence is boosted by their both bearing the same name – the Lunch Club. A booklet published in 1993 by its former convenor E T Williams, once Warden of Rhodes House, says one was ‘invented’ by Austin Lane Poole (of St John's College) with a nucleus of college history tutors. Apart from excursions to the Derby in 1934 and the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1957, its members did not meet except to eat. The majority of members have been and are heads of colleges, though one celebrated exception was Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), then a visiting professor and later a Justice of the US…

It's possible that I am the last BBC observer on the planet prepared to shed a few tears at the resignation of Tim Davie as Director-General of the BBC. Yes, I know that important heads had to roll over the Trump-edit disgrace and, God knows, I demanded enough rolling heads in my 33 years on the Today programme. But I've always had a soft spot for Tim. On the morning he became DG, one of the first things he did was summon me to his office and demand (rather flatteringly, I thought) that I give him three pieces of advice. So I did. First: ‘Your interview on PM yesterday was a shambles. In future, do some prep.’ Second: ‘You're a public figure now. Stop dressing like a teenager. No more…

The 19th-century term ‘dowager's hump’ was coined because the abnormal curvature of the spine was more likely to afflict older, richer, women than younger, poorer women. An old, rich widow did less physical labour than an old female peasant, too. The peasant was less susceptible to the curvature because her hard work made proper use of her muscles and didn't allow them to decline. As with ‘housemaid's knee’, the sexist diagnosis does not exclude male sufferers. But, still, women are simply more likely to have it than men. At a modest estimate, the NHS judges that osteoporosis afflicts half of women over 50 but only a third of men over 60. Osteoporosis causes the spine to start giving way and the head incrementally to move forward, thus creating the hump.…

Three weeks into the traditional season of ‘winter’, there was still no sign of it. The warm winds from the Azores helped sustain the last of the red admiral butterflies bobbing about the borders and onto the still-flowering heads of gold and purple cosmos. All summer, these stalwarts of the cottage-garden style had refused to oblige. But, rather than hack down their stubborn closed cups, as most tidy gardeners would, I left them to their devices. Like Bob Flowerdew's, my garden is an ongoing experiment – and the experiment yielded results. The cosmos were saving their glory for a final flourish at the tail end of one of the most extended summers on record. This has also been a mast year for trees – a natural phenomenon, where certain species…

Yesterday, I was up at 4am - not for service of morning prayer, but to load the car up with boxes of books and get on the road for a book fair in Sussex. It was a long day. Four years ago, when I was an unpaid priest in the Church of England, my finances were looking a bit dicey. I needed an income and work that would fit around my role as a carer. How difficult could it be to earn a shilling or two buying and selling old books? Could I earn what I might have got as a paid, full-time priest, somewhere in the twenty-thousands? I started by buying and selling the things I knew about – mainly fiction. I soon realised that many classic authors are…

Remarkable Renaissance Books By John Boardley Bodleian Library Publishing £50 In 1665, the first reader of Robert Hooke's Micrographia found, opposite page 210, a fold-out illustration, an engraving 17 inches across – of a flea. No one had seen this monster before, as the microscope revealed it. Hooke describes it as ‘all over adorn'd with a curiously polish'd suit of Armour, neatly jointed, and beset with multitudes of sharp pinns, shap'd almost like Porcupine's Quills or bright conical Steel-bodkins’. No wonder that, on a chill January night, Samuel Pepys recorded, ‘Before I went to bed, I sat up till two o'clock in my chamber, reading of Mr Hooke's Microscopicall Observations, the most ingenious book that ever I read in my life.’ The flea appears, beautifully reproduced, as a double-page spread…

It's not only the pudding that has to be stirred early for Christmas – this year's Stir-up Sunday was on 23rd November. Advent starts a week later. Twelve days of abstinence – fast before feast – in the run-up to the midwinter feast allowed prudent housewives in the northern hemisphere to restock the larder ahead of the Christmas festivities. St Lucy's Day, 13th December, salutes the last days of the farming year before the cows run out of milk and the hens stop laying. It's when Scandinavian housewives start their Christmas baking. St Lucy of Syracuse was a Sicilian virgin martyred for her faith by rejecting an unchristian suitor c 300 AD. Her feast day now marks the first of the 12 days that precede Christmas, just as Epiphany marks…

A friend wants a convertible. The time to buy is now, rather than spring or summer, when prices go up because a dash of sunlight tempts people to think they want blue-sky, wind-in-your-hair motoring. Come dark days and rain, many leave their convertibles in the garage or sell them. My friend is looking for a 10- to 15-year-old Golf, a good choice. It'll have the usual Golf virtues and he'll use it not only for local fine-weather pottering but for bucolic excursions to France. Golfs are comfortable and reliable, with plentiful spares in the event of breakdown – albeit limited rear legroom for taller passengers. For the same reasons, he could step up in class and image and consider Audi A3 cabriolets – and pay more. There are plenty of…

Unilever is the original Marmite stock. Not only does the company make the stuff – it's a share you either love or hate. You love it because it should be a solid performer in a standard portfolio, and you hate it for not being one. The share price is the same today as it was five years ago, and even Nelson Peltz, the activist investor who liked it so much that he joined the board, has sold part of his holding. You may be sharing his frustration, and we shareholders have had to exercise more patience than Mr Peltz has shown. It's a big company, not used to moving fast. It is years since analysts first suggested spinning off the Magnum ice-cream business, and only now is it actually happening…

Bamse is the Norwegian name for ‘Big’, ‘Boy’ or ‘Bear’. All the meanings apply to the vast, 14-stone St Bernard who became the heroic mascot of the Free Norwegian forces in Sweden during the Second World War. The breed are also most pleasingly known as Saint Dogs or Noble Steeds. They came from the Italian Alps. They're famed for their gentle temperament, with a reputation for a most particular kindness. One saved the life of a sailor by leaping a full ten feet into the sea. Bamse (1937-44) was bought by Captain Erling Hafto, master of the Thorodd, a whale-catching ship. At the outbreak of war, the ship was drafted into the Royal Norwegian Navy as a coastal patrol vessel. Bamse became an official crew member on 9th February 1940.…

Come and stay at Il Trappeto for a tour of central Puglia 4th to 11th July 2026 LIMITED TO 12 READERS – JUST TWO BEDROOMS LEFT The Oldie has hosted several tours of Puglia, based at the publisher's masseria near Ostuni. James Pembroke writes, ‘This October, I hosted 12 readers for “an unforgettable week” – “the best so far”. So I've plotted a fresh itinerary for July, with Lucy Ogilvie-Grant as your hostess. I'll be joining on the Tuesday. Lucy is the perfect hostess and knows the house and area well. Dinner will be out in a favourite restaurant, or by the pool or in the limonetto. Breakfast will be served by the pool. The new itinerary includes – of course – Lecce, the great city of the warm South,…

‘People are saying your house in Dorset is DIRTY,’ The Oldie's Town Mouse told me with compassionate joy. ‘Sophia told me.’ He's helpful like that is Tom Hodgkinson, ever on the lookout for an opportunity to indulge in mischief. Sophia has never been to my house – but her pristine chums, Jemima and Louisa, have. Being criticised by the grandes dames of Notting Hill is something of a badge of honour but, given I have a cleaner, what was the origin of these accusations? My fridge must shoulder some of the blame. I have no truck with sell-by dates. I subscribe to the smell-test theory, whereas the contents of the mighty double-doored American fridges of W11 are daily scanned by Filipino slaves for any proximity to their day of destruction.…

As the momentous anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence approaches, the America250 initiative is planning countless parades, celebrations and re-enactments. No city embodies the Revolution's raw fury like Boston. The ‘shot heard round the world’, at the nearby battles of Lexington and Concord (1775), shattered imperial manacles. Re-enactments of those battles are planned on April 29th, with musket volleys and fife-and-drum marches. Visitors can explore the city's history along the Freedom Trail, a crimson-brick path through 16 hallowed sites. The trail snakes two and a half miles from the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, the site of the 1775 battle. It goes via Boston Common, America's oldest public park (est. 1634), where British troops drilled and patriots plotted. Next is the Granary Burying Ground, where the tombstones of ‘Sons…

You either like grand, old-fashioned hotels with a man in uniform waiting to open the door of a taxi with one hand while expecting a tip in the other – or you don't. I love them. The deference laid on thicker than peanut butter on a sandwich; the assumption that you're loaded even if you're about to be taken to court for not paying your energy bill; your bags miraculously appearing in the room before you do. And the bowl of fruit with a note from the general manager, saying how delighted he is you're staying and is there anything he can do to make your visit more comfortable? Paying that gas bill would make life infinitely more comfortable but, for now, let's suspend reality and book in for a…

Man banned from garden centre without explanation Reading Chronicle Wheelbarrow race under threat i Woman drunk on EasyJet flight Argus £15 for published contributions NEW! Tune into Radio Oldie Every Tuesday, you can find the latest weekly interview by Harry Mount or Charlotte Metcalf with personalities such as Edward Fox, A N Wilson and Jeremy Hunt. Top of the Pods Each week, we release three more podcasts on Top of the Pods, our selection of the best podcasts and comedy clips on the internet. Just sign up for the newsletter on the homepage of the website. Sign up to our weekly e-newsletter…

In exciting news from the world of neurology, it has been discovered that the human brain undergoes four distinct changes en route from cradle to grave. Apparently these happen at the ages of approximately 9, 32, 66 and 83. Sadly, I haven't the minuscule professional self-respect required to spend a few minutes researching what these changes are or mean. But then I've only just turned 62, and the next brain change in four years (if I'm spared) may permit the required level of concentration. All I can say today, speaking from my favoured standpoint of near absolute ignorance, is that the discovery looks exquisitely timed for Nigel Farage. Until now, I have cleaved to the belief – as relentlessly posited by Hugh Laurie's genius diagnostician in the TV medical drama…

I occasionally turn up in support of some worthy cause. I'd like to claim this is because I'm a philanthropic do-gooder ‘giving back’ in gratitude for the great good fortune I've been blessed with. I suspect it's because I enjoy the attention, and it's interesting. Recently, I arrived at an industrial park in Witney for the launch of a production unit for Yellow Submarine, a charitable bakery providing traineeships for adults with learning difficulties. I was so moved by their story, I couldn't get my platitudinous speech out of my mouth. I ended up just telling them they were beyond marvellous and quickly cutting the ribbon. What moved me so much was that it is such a perfect model of a community enterprise. Yellow Submarine started as a charity helping…

You never forget someone who was kind to you when you were a young pipsqueak. Thus it was that, when a friend asked, ‘Did you know Richard Gott on the Guardian?’ I answered, ‘Yes – an absolute sweetie!’ Gott, who died at the end of October aged 87, was recalled in the obituaries as the journalist who ‘took Moscow gold’. He was a paid KGB informant, although he probably didn't tell the Russians much they didn't know already. But Richard's career was one of defending the hard left wherever it cropped up, even suggesting we were a bit too unkind about Pol Pot, the Cambodian mass murderer. He was a complete fool, politically. But Richard Gott was very nice to me, when I was a 21-year-old secretary on the Guardian,…

Thick blobs of sleet landed in Windsor Great Park, creating unseasonal Arctic conditions for Hilary Weston's thanksgiving service at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Hilary was a former model, born in County Dublin. In 1966, she married the late Galen Weston, whose Anglo-Canadian business dynasty controlled Selfridges in London, ABC Foods and other enterprises. She served as the 26th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario in 1997. They lived at Fort Belvedere, Surrey, famous as the Duke of Windsor's home. She died there in August, aged 83. A philanthropist, she was a huge supporter of St George's Chapel. The Dean of Windsor, the Rt Rev Christopher Cocksworth, presided, with the chapel's three Canons in attendance. The King and Queen, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, the Princess Royal and Princess Alexandra were…

In 1971, I was 28, and two national treasures, Alastair Sim and Stanley Holloway, were starring in my first West End play. What could go wrong? For one thing, they hated each other from the moment they met. Alastair Sim (1900-76), star of the Christmas film Scrooge, was a comic genius – though, strangely, he refused to acknowledge it and claimed only to be ‘an actor’. Stanley Holloway (1890-1982) came from the tradition of Victorian music hall and concert parties. He was a performer who played straight out to his public. Every night, when the curtain went up, the audience gave Alastair a round of applause – which, like a proper actor, he ignored. Stanley, however, couldn't resist acknowledging them with a grin and a wink – which set Alastair's…

Marriage should only be embarked upon where there is – as well as physical love – a complete conformity of outlook. Nancy Mitford Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. G K Chesterton I pray to God that I shall not live one hour after I have thought of using deception. Elizabeth I I turn over a new leaf every day. But the blots show through. Keith Waterhouse It is very hard to remember that events now long in the past were once in the future. Historian F W Maitland There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. Robert Louis Stevenson Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference. Charlie Chaplin You…

A Short History of America: From Tea Party to Trump By Simon Jenkins Viking £25 The brilliance of condensed history books is that they are an invaluable précis of all the stuff you vaguely know but should know better. They make an excellent gift for an uneducated godchild about to go on a gap year to, say, Korea, or an alien planning to land his spaceship there. The best of them was The Shortest History of Germany, an award-winning summary which broke the objectivity rules by positing a fiercely contentious theory. Its author, James Hawes, argued that everything bad that had come out of that country had come from East of the Elbe – the bit the Romans never reached. And everything good from Goethe to Beethoven came out of…

Attention: Writing on Life, Art and the World By Anne Enright Penguin £20 In 1969, her pockets lined by Somerset Maugham Award winnings, Angela Carter descended on Japan. Until then, her life had unfolded mostly in the cramped surrounds of south London; Tokyo astounded her as a newly discovered universe. In a letter to a friend, she deemed it ‘probably the most absolutely non-boring city in the world’. She even trained herself in a new way of seeing. An unskilled student of the Japanese language, she ‘started trying to understand things by looking at them very, very carefully, in an involuntary apprenticeship in the language of signs’. This is the tradition in which Anne Enright was schooled. I mean this literally: Carter was one of her tutors at the University…

Soho Place, London, until 21st February 2026 Graham Greene, a man not given to superlatives, called The Spy Who Came in from the Cold ‘the best spy story I have ever read’. What makes John le Carré's Cold War novel so good? And how well does it work onstage? Le Carré wrote this haunting, understated thriller at the age of 30, while working as a ‘junior diplomat’ (as he put it) at the British Embassy in Bonn. In reality, he was working for MI6 - Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. This inside knowledge gave le Carré what all writers crave – the ring of truth. He'd found that literary sweet spot, ‘where reality goes through the secret door to fiction’. This, his third novel, was his first bestseller – and the…

Let's be honest. London's restaurants are, for the most part, noisy, busy affairs - not least because of the loud music and the open kitchens where manic chefs flip rib-eye steaks ‘on the embers’. It's all too Beowulf – especially for lunch. So if you want some serenity, head to King's Cross to The Yellow Bittern, named after an 18th-century Irish poem about a bird who couldn't crack the ice with his beak to get a drink. It is situated just 30 yards from Keystone Crescent, the smallest crescent in Europe, built in 1848 by Robert Stuckey. The crescent is always said to be the location of Mrs ‘Lopsided’ Wilberforce's house in The Ladykillers (1955), but they actually built a properly skewed house on a vacant lot nearby. There's nothing…

‘Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens/ Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens/ Even though the prospect sickens/ Brother, here we go again.’ A Christmas Carol was penned by the great American satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer, who died earlier this year, aged 97. The song rails against seasonal sentimentality, rampant commercialism, familial ill will and overindulgence. If you agree with Lehrer, you might prefer a remote, uninhabited island to the enforced jollity of another Christmas in the company of Perry Como et al. But there are strategies for coping, not least of which is making sure everyone has something nice to drink. To this end, as you might expect, I have a few suggestions. The first is rum, for which I have two purposes in mind. First, Cumberland rum butter:…

Corfu is blessed with fertile, green landscapes, a turquoise-blue sea and a UNESCO-listed historic town centre, featuring Venetian architecture and fortifications. No wonder the British have been enchanted by the northernmost Ionian island for over a century – and who has captured the magic of the island in prose better than the Durrell brothers, Gerald and Lawrence? Join our garden-tour expert, Kirsty Fergusson, to follow in their footsteps, discovering the lush north-east of the island in warm October sunshine. We will stay at the luxurious Rodostamo Hotel & Spa, dining on the shores of Gouvia Bay. We'll experience a fabulous Greek feast – with music and dancing – at Danila village on the film set of the BBC series The Durrells. It will be an unforgettable Oldie holiday. ITINERARY Depart…

In very particular places, taking a walk can be to step into another time or another state of consciousness. When I require mind-bending time travel, I head to Warham Camp. It was a dank November day when I set out south on a long straight lane from tiny, pretty, flinty Warham village, tucked inland from the coast. This part of north Norfolk is an open, gently rolling and lightly populated landscape. The road sloped down to the Stiffkey, one of the region's finest chalk streams. Recently, thanks to the Norfolk Rivers Trust and others, the canalised stream has been rewiggled; the valley here is wilder and rushier than it's been for millennia. The water ran delightfully clear under the little humpbacked bridge and I continued up the lane, following linnets…

Back in 1977, the redoubtable English women's international player Rixi Markus (who died in 1992) wrote her classic, Bid Boldly, Play Safe. Pundits quipped (for Rixi loved to bid) that ‘Rixi bid boldly to (say) 4♠, and played safely for three down’. Dealer South Both Vulnerable (1) Perhaps (probably) I should have bid 1NT. But I didn't want to ‘wrong-side’ Notrumps if my partner held, say, ♠Kx. (2) An asking bid of 3♠ is indicated – I'll now bid bid 3NT with, say ♠QJx and ♦K – nine easy tricks. Let's now travel to Bristol for the most prestigious British bridge event in the calendar, the Spring Foursomes. We'll see North (your columnist) and partner Alex Allfrey ‘bid poorly, play well’. West led the knave of spades, East winning the…

Is there something you really miss when abroad? My dog, Lolly, a lurcher. What's your favourite destination? Anywhere fascinating that has sun – but I really love Suffolk. I came from Devon and we used to have a house in Corfu up in the hills, away from the beaches in the north. I had a wonderful trip to Mexico to see a friend about 18 months ago and also went to Argentina. But I'm slightly less up for it now because of the air travel and everything that that means. I've just read Ian McEwan's new book What We Can Know, to do with life a century from now and how they look back on us as totally irresponsible and the cause of all their woes. What are your earliest…

Among the contributors HARRY EYRES has been a theatre critic, wine writer and poetry editor. For a decade, he wrote the ‘Slow Lane’ column for the Financial Times. His most recent book is Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet. JOHN GIMLETTE is a practising barrister and the author of six books. He won the 1997 Shiva Naipaul Prize for travel writing. In 2022, Wild Coast won the Dolman Travel Book Prize and was later named by the Daily Telegraph as ‘one of the best 20 travel books of all time’. MARK McCRUM has written numerous travel books and several best-sellers, including Robbie Williams: Somebody Someday. He is the author of the Francis Meadowes series of murder mysteries. JONATHAN RAY is a journalist and the drinks editor of the…

Not long before the writer John Julius Norwich died in 2018, aged 88, I interviewed him about his old friend, the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) – and his enchanted home in Kardamyli in the Mani, in the Peloponnese. Paddy told him about the house he built with his wife, Joan, in 1964, ‘I want it to be part of outdoors, so that, if a chicken were found wandering through the library, no one would be a bit surprised.’ That is how their villa still feels today – in touch with Kardamyli's very ancient past. In The Iliad, Agamemnon offered the citadel of Kardamyli to Achilles. And Kardamyli is the only place where, at dusk, I have seen the sea turn a claret colour, as in Homer's ‘oinopontos’ or wine-dark…