Other Men's Flowers

I came very late to drug addiction: in my teens and twenties I was too innocent to notice what was going on. Once at a party a girl passed m...

Warning: This post consists of personal reminiscences, and is therefore of no interest whatsoever to anyone except my family and close frien...

No 31 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century July 1927:  Dear Nellie, writes Ada to her friend, also in Tunbridge W...

Much has been written recently about one Fabio Capello, and some confusion has arisen about him, many people arguing that he is a kind of pa...

Londoners cursing the heat may like to be reminded what London has been like from time to time in earlier years: "In its long history t...

The other day I watched The Blues Brothers , the best musical comedy of all time; among the cast were Ray Charles, John Belushi, Aretha Fran...

Is Cameroon a mightier nation than Denmark? Can a graceless Scotsman beat a Frenchman called Jo-Wilfried Tsonga? All those of us with little...

This is a word which has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in its June quarterly update. The OED says of it: One surprise of this ...

It was not until I acquired this the other day (an accident: no other parties were involved) that I realised just how much amusement the sig...

No 30 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century August 1920 Annie sends this luxury tinted card with embossed borders fr...

We lay our railway lines on sleepers ; over there they lay their railroad tracks on ties , while our ties are neckties to them. But all ...

It has always been widely believed that monks and nuns do not lead lives of consistent virtue, and thus their transgressions have frequently...

Why is Google spying on me? Well, of course, Google spies on everybody in the known universe, and many outside it. But few people have a wat...

More recycled posts from 2005: hats God bless her, and all who sail in her words Carelessness in the OED personal A happy parting i...

Anyone who visits the internet knows that a large proportion of what you find there is garbage, and sometimes dangerous: get involved in it ...

One of the nastiest columns in the increasingly rabid Sunday Times is written by one Rod Liddle and consists mainly of cheap sneers targete...

It is difficult to see why the faithful are so unhappy about Dr Craig Venter's attempt to play at God by creating life. I mean, anyone w...

This is how Horace Rumpole referred to his wife (she called him 'Rumpole'); John Mortimer took the title from H. Rider Haggard's...

Towards the end of last year there was a letter published in Private Eye with the writer's name adding a final note. This has evoked a ...

I sleep very well, on the whole. When anxious, or dreading the next day, I can usually do as Winston Churchill recommended: "Turn out t...