Dear old England. What a wonderful country we live in. Change and decay in all around I see. Europe is in a state of near-collapse. Chaos and rioting have run rife throughout the Middle East. The stock market has been blasted into free-fall. No matter, though. Today’s headlines in what remains of ...
To all men's eternal detriment, a conceited fool in the form of has-been actor Hugh Grant, self-appointed spokesman and shop-floor representative for chauvinist bigotry, spoke out this weekend on BBC's Newsnight program on behalf of gag orders designed to protect super-famous miscreants" ...
Once upon a time at a famous school in La-La Land, Cammy Cam and Boris Bunter were sitting under an oak tree plaiting yellow ribbons and scoffing buns. "Penny for your thoughts, fatty," said Cam. "Jolly good buns," said Boris. "No, I mean proper thoughts like Mao ...
When the modern-day eminences grises in grey suits from St. James’s gave the nod of approval to William and Kate’s marriage, only the most hardened cynics were heard groaning in Old England’s republican boroughs"them and the Bishop of Willesden, that worthy prelate who had ...
My object all sublime I shall achieve in time" To let the punishment fit the crime" The punishment fit the crime. Was that a New Year's resolution of Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt I was quoting? Actually, they were lines from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, in which my godson was to ...
Now is the winter of our discontent Made ever more wretched by this lack of sun. Caught in a blighted, anarchic winter's grip, Britain is beset by swine flu, influenza B, H2N3, and a host of other diseases. Heathrow Airport, condemned by Cardinal Kasper as a Third World country, is in frozen ...
Part II Last week I wrote about my memorable-albeit-disagreeable encounter with one Daniel C. Leghorn in Bemelman's bar at New York's Carlyle hotel. It was there where, fortified by a half-dozen Manhattans, the demented Leghorn had in a moment of confusion and madness mistaken me for a man called ...
Part I Following my recent tour of the Petropavlovsk gold project in Eastern Russia, I opted to return home by a somewhat circuitous route, spending two days in Haida Gwaii, off Canada's Northwest Coast, before proceeding via Calgary to New York and thence on to London. I stopped in Haida Gwaii, ...
Looking back on it now, "lunacy" is the word that springs most readily to mind. It was Easter 1967. I was just sixteen and had signed up to go on a school trip to Russia for the holidays. I say "lunacy" because the idea of taking a bunch of Etonians to Russia would be a tall order ...
"I wouldn"t like to go to prison," said Gimlet. "The idea is a very unpleasant one." I had to agree with him. "The conditions are bleak and dispiriting, and the notion of being locked in is perfectly dreadful." He was right, of course, but quite what had inspired such ...
