Category: Literature

Lush Places

The title is an homage to William Boot’s column in The Beast (vide Scoop, Evelyn Waugh, 1933). Whether it is mild weather or competition from feeders in the cemetery, our avian amigos are not making their way, ‘feather footed through the plashy fen’, to the feeders in the back garden.

Big Breakfast

I don’t often have breakfast and rarely brekker in bed. A cup of strong coffee suffices. Recently this routine was interrupted by Robert bringing me a muffin with egg and bacon at an early hour.

Published
Categorised as Literature

A Christmas Dozen

A sub-optimal aspect of Christmas as a child was writing thank you letters. Here are twelve such letters invented by John Julius Norwich and published in his Christmas Crackers, 2000 – 2009.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Mortdecai

Yesterday I did some Christmas shopping in Jermyn and St James’s streets. The only gift that I know will be well received is my present to me.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Who Dunnit?

There’s a lot of comfort in a good old-fashioned detective novel written in the first half of the 20th century. I exclude anything by Agatha Christie – her’s bore me stiff.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Jeeves in Japan

Why are the Japanese obsessed with butlers? Kazuo Ishiguro’s Man Booker winner in 1989, The Remains of the Day, has a butler as its central character.

Dinner was rather strained

On February 13th 1935 Harold Nicolson was again staying with Betty Morrow, Dwight Morrow’s widow, and Anne and Charles Lindbergh at Englewood, New Jersey. This is what he wrote to Vita the following day. 

Thor what it’s worth

Dwight Morrow (1873 – 1931) was an American businessman, diplomat and politician. His daughter, Anne, decided to commemorate him by commissioning a biography.

Wodehouse Wednesday

Yesterday was Stuffing Wednesday, not to be confused with Stir-up Sunday. I went to the Chairman’s elegant but untidy residence in Maida Vale.

Nicky Haslam

Nicky Haslam has had a variety of bedfellows but none more surprising than General Sir John Hackett, GCB, CBE, DSO & bar, MC and Sir Max Hastings. His autobiography, Redeeming Features, lies between Hackett’s I was a Stranger and Hastings’s Did You Really Shoot the Television? on my biog/diary shelves.