Max Beerbohm

So many posts start like this, but here I go again – more than forty years ago … I was given as a birthday present a novel, actually the only one he wrote, by Max Beerbohm. The donor was a university friend, we are still friends and I still have Zuleika Dobson.

For the Birds

If Gilbert White could do it so can I. If you visit a nature reserve there are hides for observation. I have got in on the act.

Published
Categorised as Nature

A Time of Gifts

A sign that I’m getting on a bit came when one of my God-daughters invited me to her daughter’s Christening. I was pleased to be asked, glad that I accepted and toddled along bearing a token gift.

Published
Categorised as Family

In Three Words

Charles Moore writing in The Spectator last week drew my attention to an 80th anniversary that had passed me by.

A History Lesson about Brixsi (sic)

King Harold’s brother-in-law was a Saxon thane with a name that shows remarkable prescience: Brixsi. Today the UK has rejected the EU Conquest, in 1066 Brixsi rejected the Norman one and paid for the consequences. The analogy stops here but the history lesson continues.

Published
Categorised as History

Ban Driven Grouse Shooting

This is the title of a petition made to Parliament. As it has received  more than 100,000 signatures it is eligible to be debated later this year.

Store Wars

There are developments on the Barons Court retail scene. The Four Vintners off-licence that went into receivership last year is to re-open as a branch of Oddbins.

Hello Mr Chips

I have advance notice, via Time Out, that a certain royal personage will be seen streaking in Soho at the end of this month.

I’m an Oldie

Alexander Chancellor and I have been together a long time; in fact since 1975. I was a student at Durham and a reader of The Spectator, he was the new editor.