Stones of Venice

A new exhibition opens at the Ashmolean today; drawings of Venice culled from the Uffizi, Christ Church and their own collection. Among others they are by Titian, Tintoretto and Canaletto.

The Man Who….

This post is about someone who wrote more than 170 novels, 18 plays and 917 short stories. In 1928 a quarter of all books sold in the UK were by this author. One more clue: this person wrote the screenplay for King Kong.

All The King’s Horses

All The Queen’s horses, of course, and in 2013 there were still 501 of them in the British army. More than there are tanks, only 227.

Fill Up Your Tank

The President of OPEC and the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell are in agreement; oil prices will go up. They would say that, wouldn’t they? (Thank you Mandy for your contribution to what is supposed to be a serious post.)

Bad News From Wolfsburg

You may remember Gifford, my hedge fund manager friend, who flits between the East and West coasts while managing a long/short equity fund domiciled in the Cayman Islands. He wrote to me and the other investors in his fund this week and I’d like to share what he had to say.

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Bungalow Bliss

Last year Jack Fitzsimons died. His legacy as a principled Irish politician should never be forgotten but he will be remembered more by me for writing Bungalow Bliss.

Leather Armchairs

Leather Armchairs is a book by Charles Graves, the poet Robert’s brother, published in 1963. It has a foreword by P G Wodehouse, which is a good start, and it describes sixty of the London Clubs then extant.

Two Nights in Kunduz

This is what I wrote in 2008 about two nights I spent in Kunduz, now perhaps captured by the Taliban. What I didn’t write then, was that on the first evening, walking through the streets, I felt for the only time on that trip to Afghanistan very much in danger and that, returning to our… Continue reading Two Nights in Kunduz

My Conference Speech

How long will David Cameron speak for this morning as the conquering hero at the Conservative party conference in Manchester?