Other Men's Flowers

I intended to write something about chic in my last post but one since it would crop up naturally in a piece about a Frenchwoman, but I fou...

Politicians, speechwriters and political commentators seldom attempt this; it’s much less trouble to recycle debased currency. Effective and...

My lifelong interest in hats (this will be my 24th post on the subject) stems not from their personal significance but entirely on envy, for...

I never thought that I would want to quote extensively from anything published in the Daily Telegraph , but Jan Moir’s review of a book by ...

In 1834 the fifteen-year-old Victoria paid a less than happy visit to the Sussex resort of Hastings. It rained incessantly, one of her footm...

I had intended to write for today’s post a rather critical review of Hey there, Ludwig! , Hans Thielemann’s new best-seller—over-praised, i...

We all have credit cards which encourage us to commit the sins of improvidence and excessive consumption while charging us heavily for doing...

When at a loss for something to write about, I can always fall back on an extract from my magisterial Dossier of Hats . This is a cheerful d...

…or puh-leeze ! The OED, in updating the alphabetical range porter to purposive , has added this, justifying its inclusion on the grounds t...

My day has been made by a Mr Noel Privett of Whitchurch in Hampshire, who wrote to the Guardian : "To mark the death of Marcel Marceau,...

It has been brought to my attention by a friend of mine (he’s a defrocked priest, actually, but this is not relevant) that in choosing pictu...

My old friend Grumio , for whose intellect, percipience and erudition I have long had the greatest respect, emailed this to me the other day...

…lovely (marvellous Cole Porter lyrics here ). I was once told that I use this word far too often (by an acquaintance who, like many Cambri...

Here’s the little fellow at the Empress Hall, London, in 1951 (the music stand was set too high for him). It looks as if he was a fair athle...

Céline Graciet is one of the best English-French translators in the country, but she is clearly not much good at translating from Te Reo Māo...

This year the Jesus Skateboarding Classic, the event of the year for those who are into skateboards, baggy shorts, God and crucifixes, is b...

Where would we be without booze? Healthier, I dare say, but less happy. I have been enjoying it for more than half a century, but I have dec...

A number of my acquaintances have emigrated to Spain or are thinking of doing so. I have never wanted to go and live there, though I have ha...

A wiki is a collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it; you can read about them here . They may be cate...

One doesn’t hear much about Spiritualism * these days; I suppose there are so many other, newer, crackpot ideas vying for attention that su...