‘Few shows of such embarrassing, authorial ineptitude can have hit the London stage since the Blitz.’ That was the verdict of Nicholas de Jongh, the Evening Standard drama critic, on the satirical play about the royal family that Lloyd Evans and I wrote in 2006. It wasn’t the only bad review we got, but it
I can’t afford to send my children to private school — and I’m relishing the cachet This morning I received a letter from Norland Place, a much sought-after private school on Holland Park Avenue, informing me that my son Ludo had been awarded a place in September 2009. There was a time when this would
It’s a boy! This was the news following my wife’s 20-week scan last week. I know it is infra dig to find out the sex of your baby in advance, but Caroline said she needed to be psychologically prepared just in case it was a boy. She wanted another girl, obviously, and she didn’t want
Where is the next generation of Toby Youngs? It’s my turn to dismiss their drivel In 1988, Weidenfeld and Nicolson published a book called The Oxford Myth. Edited by Rachel Johnson and containing essays by a variety of precocious undergraduates, it was the worst reviewed book of the year. ‘A singularly worthless volume,’ wrote Niall
As an angry young man in the 1990s, I used to get extremely irritated when I read articles by left-wing intellectuals in the London Review of Books about football. To my jaundiced eye, it was a feeble attempt to shore up their credentials as men of the people. Back in those days, football was still
I love Stone, Vine & Sun of Winchester. They keep winning awards for best independent wine merchant; they have a knack for finding delicious wines at excellent prices from places you haven’t heard about yet but very soon will. They’ve always been terrific on unknown France, but they’ve branched out into the New World, especially
Big, lazy V8 engines, powerful and durable, are as American as Coca-Cola and Stetsons. Europeans, with smaller cars, shorter distances, dearer petrol and high-taxing governments, have traditionally gone for fewer cubic centimetres and higher revs, which usually meant more stressed engines but better handling cars. There have been many exceptions, of course, particularly those manufacturers
My favourite, though almost inevitably apocryphal, story from the US elections so far: Hillary Clinton, on a school visit, invites pupils to question her. ‘OK, Mrs Clinton,’ says Benjamin, ‘why did you vote for the Iraq war when now you oppose it? Why did you achieve so little on healthcare reform? And why didn’t you
As a father of three small children, I find myself constantly baffled by what is known in our household as ‘the boredom paradox’. Why is it that my four-year-old daughter considers a trip to Loftus Road to watch QPR battle against relegation ‘boring’, while her enjoyment of the same six episodes of Numberjacks can never
It is not fair to blame the Americans for every element of speech that we don’t like, but there are a couple of pieces of syntax that have blown like some New World bacterium over our islands and have grown on the blank petri dishes of the English mind. (I was going to say ‘like
Entering The Trainers House at Moulton Paddocks is a reminder that preparing racehorses is not a job but a way of life. In the cheerfully cluttered lobby and kitchen, framed pictures of Lucy Wadham’s winners vie for wall space with those of jodhpured infant Wadhams, either exhilarated or grimly determined, soaring over obstacles. Step up
‘So,’ said the television interviewer, fixing me with an inquisitorial stare, ‘why are you so desperate to be a celebrity?’ This was last week on BBC2, but the question comes up in virtually every television interview I do. I’m beginning to suspect that I’m the only member of the chattering classes foolish enough to admit
In the newspaper business there’s a name for a story that makes your jaw hit the floor and your eyes pop out of your skull: ‘a marmalade dropper’. For instance, the disclosure that HM Revenue and Customs had misplaced the personal records of 25 million people was ‘a marmalade dropper’, as was the revelation that
More bad news for the ‘Hons’. According to a sociological survey funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, class doesn’t necessarily guarantee status. On the contrary, the two are barely even connected in today’s Britain. So the fact that my father was ennobled for, among other things, founding the Economic and Social Research Council
What happened? Where did 2007 go? Come to think of it, where did the last 10 years go? It’s as though there’s an egg-timer on my desk that measures how much time I have left, only it isn’t working properly. When I keep my eyes on it, the sand trickles through at a steady pace,
Upper Lambourn trainer Charlie Mann, who was forcibly retired as a jockey in 1989 by breaking his neck after riding around 150 winners, lists his hobby as ‘having fun’. His idea of doing just that included returning to the saddle in 1994, with a licence he printed for himself (a misdemeanour which cost him a
As I spend much of my life in a flower bed, bottom up, I rarely consciously make the connection between the flowers that I grow in my garden and their more elevated associations, in particular their role in Christian art. Only when I visit art galleries or churches am I forcibly reminded that gardens and
‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’ John Maynard Keynes retorted to a critic. A pity he’s not here to ask the same question of the Department for Transport (DfT) when they lecture us on road deaths this Christmas. Four years ago The Spectator (22 November 2003) helped to
When a person does something to remind you of their superior status, I often wonder whether he or she is fully in control of what they’re doing. Name-droppers, for instance, often seem to be acting compulsively, as if they’re suffering from a mild personality disorder. Once the impulse to drop the name has been triggered
After Denman, the deluge. The downpour which followed the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury reduced my notes to soggy pulp, but no matter. I will remember almost every stride. Denman’s victory, carrying 11st 12lb on sodden ground and beating a field of the best handicappers in the country out of sight, was one which will