Five Go Down to the Sea

The title may ring a bell if you grew up on a literary diet of Enid Blyton. In fact we were four as our fifth had a knee injury and we didn’t have Timmy, the dog in the Famous Five series.

Published
Categorised as Art, Travel

The Life

I expected twelve volumes of James Lees-Milne’s diaries to last me through the winter but like a case of wine they were consumed more quickly than anticipated. I finished them with considerable sadness one morning last week.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Palm Oil

This is what WWF says: Palm oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet, and it is in about half of all packaged products sold in the supermarket. While palm oil is the most efficient source of vegetable oil, its rapid expansion threatens some of the planet’s most important and sensitive habitats. 

Grave Matters

It took a third visit to find this rather prominent grave at St Nicholas’s Chiswick. It is in a part of the graveyard that I thought only had modern headstones.

Blue Sky Drinking

I find a Bloody Mary a great mental stimulant. Top Tip is to start with the small bits: lemon juice, Tabasco, Lea & Perrins, pepper, best not to add celery salt as the tomato juice has plenty of that. Then chuck in the ice, vodka and tomato juice – eureka!

Published
Categorised as Environment

Best Books

“It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than… Continue reading Best Books

Published
Categorised as Literature

HP Sauce

“In my father’s house are many mansions” (John 14:2). I stay in a house with many bedrooms and in every one is a copy of Rathcormick: a Childhood Recalled (2001) by Homan Potterton.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Juncker & Trump; Dangerous Men

There’s nothing wrong with changing one’s mind, is there? Before the EU referendum I was undecided, then I became a Remainer, then I thought we could fudge some deal whereby the UK remained in the EEA or something similar. Now I have changed my mind again.

Published
Categorised as Politics

The Eisenhower Centre

Walking around London you see things that you’d miss on a bus or in a taxi. The Eisenhower Centre is an example.