Other Men's Flowers

No 18 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century November 1990: Dave and Sue to Mr and Mrs C in Merseyside. Arrived OK,...

More than four years ago Sainsbury's started calling their employees colleagues . This struck me as a bit soppy, and when I conducted a ...

I saw on TV the other day a young woman called Danielle Da Costa explaining how to be struck by a car so that you are hurled across its bonn...

As I mentioned the other day, I used to review West End plays from time to time for a chain of provincial weekly newspapers, and once I was...

In these dark times it was heartwarming to hear yesterday that Joanna Lumley has been granted the right to take up permanent residence in En...

Scapegoat, n. In the Mosaic ritual of the Day of Atonement (Lev. xvi), that one of two goats that was chosen by lot to be sent alive into t...

The following thirteen (fairly) eminent people have two things in common. What are they? Christopher Fry, playwright Jim Callaghan, prime mi...

No 17 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century September 1989: David and Mollie in Jerusalem to Mr RM in NY. Very bes...

It's not difficult to form an opinion about the proposal to introduce a universal ID card: reflecting on the enormous cost, the likeliho...

The French were a little hasty in congratulating themselves on escaping the worst effects of the credit crunch through their aversion to cre...

Last Sunday's's edition of a terrible TV game show called Beat the Star (originally Schlag den Raab ; sixteen episodes on German TV...

I haven't watched The Daily Show very often recently; Jon Stewart is a bit pleased with himself and the sycophantic laughter sometimes ...

I have never been plagued by superstitious compulsions: I do not feel compelled to walk on (or to avoid walking on) lines in the pavement, o...

More recycled posts from 2004 literature A handbook of blood, sadism and terror for children parody A classic piece of German literature upd...

No 16 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century December 1972: The title of this fine card, despite its solemn echo o...

Back in the sixties I wrote a letter to a local paper (I had a lot of time on my hands) expressing some trenchant views about a concert hall...

Every two years the UK publishing industry chooses a distinguished writer or illustrator of children's books as Children's Laureate ...

Fictional characters are rarely the subject of genealogical research, but the ancestors of Pilot-Officer Prune were thoroughly investigated ...

Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg loved a good joke but discovered during the First World War that these were no...

Actually he has nine major ones and many others; it was just that I couldn't think of a caption for this magnificent picture . Please, n...