Marriage

It’s a tough world out there for singletons in the digital age. Although dating apps like Tinder mean it’s never been easier to look for love, many find that any such romance is fleeting and miss the days of proper courtship. So, perhaps that’s why some women are now thinking outside the box. The artist Tracey Emin has announced that she has finally taken the plunge and got hitched. However, rather than a lucky man or woman, Emin has found love with a… rock. Yes, Emin has married an inanimate object after the pair met in France. For the ceremony, Emin wore her father’s white funeral shroud. While the ancient stone is thought

I’m planning to propose to my boyfriend this leap year. I’m proposing that he earns another £10,000 and loses a stone. But marriage? Hell, no. I don’t know why, in the age of equality, society still endorses women going down on bended knee on one solitary day every four years. The internet blames it on St Bridget, who in the 5th century allegedly complained that some men took too damn long to propose. It was St Patrick, though, who came up with the wheeze of granting us special dispensation to propose every 29 February. But to propose on this day is hideously outdated. It is tacky. It is tabloid. It is

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/insidethetorieseudogfight/media.mp3″ title=”Katie Glass and Isabel Hardman discuss Leap Year proposals” startat=1456] Listen [/audioplayer] I’m planning to propose to my boyfriend this leap year. I’m proposing that he earns another £10,000 and loses a stone. But marriage? Hell, no. I don’t know why, in the age of equality, society still endorses women going down on bended knee on one solitary day every four years. The internet blames it on St Bridget, who in the 5th century allegedly complained that some men took too damn long to propose. It was St Patrick, though, who came up with the wheeze of granting us special dispensation to propose every 29 February. But to propose

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