A Curate’s Egg

My performance for the second quarter of 2021 arrived last week and I’m giving myself a small pat on the back.

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Categorised as Business

A Quest for Queen Alexandra

I will go to look at the new memorial to Diana, Princess of Wales, but at first sight it does not appeal. Perhaps it will look better in the context of its garden setting outside Kensington Palace.

First Catch Your Hare

The illustration is a red herring or a March hare or something. It is an interesting book but of no relevance today.

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Categorised as Literature

Smoking Chimneys

It has taken three months to get into Lutyens’ life but it has been worth the effort.

Hawes & Curtis

I first noticed Hawes & Curtis about ten years ago. I was still working in the City and bought a couple of cheap off-the-peg suits.

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Categorised as Shopping

Tears Before Bedtime

Obituaries are usually kind but this is the best The Independent could muster when Barbara Skelton died in 1996: “selfish, sulky, socially unmanageable, agreeable only when she was in the mood – the victim of the incurable boredom which fostered her promiscuity and her notorious rudeness”.

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Categorised as Literature

Outsourcing

How much do I outsource and how much does it cost?

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Categorised as Business

One Hundred Easy Ways

Last night New York City came to Holland Park in Quick Fantastic’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town.

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Categorised as Music

June Gleanings

I find it some consolation that whatever indignities the Catholic Church has suffered in recent years, it retains its pre-eminence in the art of casuistry. (Letter in The Times from Sir Richard Stagg about the Prime Minister’s marriage at Westminster Cathedral) 10th September 2012. The idea of His Blondness with a finger on the nuclear button… Continue reading June Gleanings