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It is, England cricket fans must remember, only one match in a five-Test series. They began the Ashes needing to win three Tests and the requirement remains the same despite the humiliation in Perth. There is still a reason to get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow for the next game. Lightning need not strike twice, even if the foolhardy way that England bat reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s line about the man who stands on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting: ‘All gods are bastards!’ Even those who made an 18,000-mile round trip to see the Ashes begin two weeks ago and got three extra

If you’re fortunate enough to have been well-lunched at an establishment like the Ritz or 5 Hertford Street, your host may ask if you fancy a cigar. You would be forgiven for declining the opportunity to step out into the December chill. Say as much and a proud gleam may then enter your host’s eyes as he tells you that there is no need to shiver on a wintry terrace or, even worse, stand in the street. There are two dozen premises, mostly around St James’s Street in the centre of London, that managed to evade the vagaries of the smoking ban in 2007 and continue to offer their patrons

I was driving my daughter to school recently when we tuned into Heart Breakfast. A caller was attempting to answer five Christmas-related questions that, if successful, would mean that the countdown to the big day could ‘officially begin’. They weren’t hard but when the questions were answered correctly, there was pandemonium in the Heart studios. Everyone gushed with excitement and wished each other a Merry Christmas, co-host Amanda Holden cried, and the first of very many broadcasts of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas’ began. It was 10 November – more than six weeks before Christmas Day. It was so unseasonably warm that people were still in shorts. The

Norman Lebrecht, who attends concerts as frequently as falcons swoop over St John’s Wood, has declared 2025 to be a terrible year for music. We are at the mercy of political activists, he thinks, and he has a point. Zealots, particularly those who pursue pro-Palestinian causes, are relentless troublemakers for whom an undefended concert hall or opera house offers an easy target for protest. But for this concert-goer, 2025 was a wonderful year, in terms of quality and variety. So far the inventory reads 43 concerts and nine operas. Not the grandest of totals, and nowhere near a personal best, but a decent tally – with power to add, too.

It may come as surprise to discover that A Room with a View, the celebrated Merchant-Ivory adaption of the E.M. Forster novel, is 40 this month. Yes, as hard as it is to believe, the film starring Helena Bonham Carter and Maggie Smith had its premiere in December 1985 and went on general release in April 1986. Step back, if you will, from the baffling realisation that somehow A Room with a View is therefore exactly equidistant between the present time and the death of Adolf Hitler in 1945, and instead focus on a rather more cheerful point altogether. Because A Room with a View, the low-budget tale of mismatched

In search of coffee on my way to work the other day, I stopped short mid-way into a branch of a popular coffee shop when I noticed the digital ordering screens. Nothing will lose my business faster than being asked to queue twice and do the work of someone else for something simple. But these ordering screens seem to be becoming ubiquitous in our towns and cities, forcing those of us who have actually come into the office, likely to sit in front of a screen, to spend our lunchtimes also staring at a screen scrolling through options, when there is an actual human being standing behind a counter a