Other Men's Flowers

Even before you were liquidated by Stalin, it probably wasn't a lot of fun being a kulak. Even less, I would guess, being a burlak ; the...

I enjoy reading obituaries, not so much in a morbid way, or with schadenfreude (good, I've outlasted him ), but to marvel at the extraor...

Playwright David Edgar, in a fascinating piece in the Guardian , notes that the same summary can describe more than one play, film or story,...

Tomorrow will be the centenary of Louis Blériot's crossing of the Channel in his eleventh contraption. No doubt the Daily Mail will be m...

Last week I went to see the touring production of Emma Rice's ingenious multimedia take on David Lean's film Brief Encounter . Afte...

Not much junk comes through the letter-box nowadays and it's no great chore to transfer it from the doormat into the paper recycling box...

Moving on, giggling, from reading about a man in Düsseldorf who tried to fix his air mattress using tyre repair solvent, causing an explosio...

No 21 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century February 1905: Lottie to Miss Hollands in Higham, Kent from Rochester:...

Only two hat-wearers have been featured more than once in the Oxford Enchiridion of Egregious Headgear . The first is our Queen, who has ma...

Ballymackleduff, Derryfubble, Benburb : Address of subscriber in the Northern Ireland Telephone Directory Oh, the world was full of grievi...

Some of the best Punch cartoons had no captions. Here is Ronald Searle, 1955.

Having made an abortive attempt to get a degree in mechanical engineering, I did get far enough advanced in pure mathematics to be able to a...

I am usually pleased to get emails from The Reverend Brendan Powell Smith, but the one that came this week brought some rather sombre news....

There are one hundred people at a party. Everybody shakes hands with everybody else. How many handshakes are there? This is quite straightfo...

Recycled posts from 2005 history An admiral gets the non-job food The trouble with Jerusalem artichokes abroad Don't get your hair cut i...

No 20 in a series of extracts from The Postcard Century . There have been two for every decade of the 20th century, but now I will start to...

Winnie-the-Pooh and Wind in the Willows aside, I never cared much for anthropomorphic children's stories, and I had heard only vaguely...

I had no idea, until I read a fascinating piece by Patricia Marx in the New Yorker, that one and a quarter billion dollars in kosher-certifi...

......or out of it, as the case may be. Passed a pleasant half-hour at the hustings earlier this month. Our local tennis club was transforme...

R H Brock, 1916 'How is it you're not at the Front, young man?' 'Cause there ain't no milk at that end, mum.' Durin...