Other Men's Flowers

Good is often done for selfish reasons – to massage an ego, to ease a conscience, or in the expectation of reward in the next world. But thi...

Crisis Pictures publish daily images of humanitarian emergencies worldwide that would not otherwise reach a broad audience. They select ima...

Molly Jong-Fast, Erica Jong’s daughter, has revealed horrifying details of Sophie Dahl’s early life with her (Sophie’s) mother, Tessa Dahl. ...

There are many websites offering pretty if slightly boring pictures of auroras and a few with gloating details of the Aurora ’s aborted rou...

…continued from Part 3 I read the other day that North Korean state television is showing a five-part series entitled Let's Trim our Hai...

It is a common enough error to confuse compliment (an expression of praise) with complement (that which completes). The marketing men of m...

One of my American correspondents finds it deeply shocking that Prince Harry wore a Nazi uniform to a party. I do not think this is the righ...

We spent New Year’s Eve with some friends who gave us at dinner (among much else) a gorgeous, delicate soup made from Jerusalem artichokes ...

Among the many hairy old institutions we have here in England, few are hairier or older than our most ancient military honour, the post of L...

Today is the 88th birthday of the veteran actor Herbert Lom , born Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru in Prague. I neve...

Included in this family of birds is the grouse species, among its subspecies being Lagopus lagopus scoticus , the red grouse of Britain, and...

Very few Americans know that nearly two hundred years ago their flag flew proudly and defiantly over part of the small seaside town of Hasti...

What riches are here! The sub-title of the 1400-page reference book originally compiled by the great Eric Partridge, published in 1937 and n...

Actually, an informant reporting from Athens (a senior retired MoD mandarin, now a sports administrator of international repute) told me tha...

As I write this the death toll is already in the tens of thousands. And maybe a million homeless. I think I will post no more until the New ...

I chose my fifty films from those I would like to see again but of course in later viewings one is sometimes disappointed. Bearing this in ...

“It's always seemed to me, after all, that Christmas, with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful opportunity each year to refl...

Everyone knows a few of the classic lines from films – “Frankly, my dear…”, “Infamy! Infamy!..”, “Fasten your seatbelts…”, and most of the t...

If there is a defect in my character – and this is a matter much disputed between those who hotly maintain that there are none and those who...

The last of the Goossens family has died at the age of 105: Sidonie Goossens was a harpist of world renown for more than half a century. Thi...