Of all Western European countries, England is the most richly endowed with unutterably dismal towns and cities, in part the heritage of the Industrial Revolution and in part that of modern architects and town planners. I once wrote of Walsall that it was the ugliest town in the world, to which one ...
From time to time I receive invitations by e-mail to attend conferences on something called medical leadership. "Do you want to be a leader?" ask the invitations, to which the answer, in my case, is "No." I am too old for such an ambition, and in any case I have never had it. I ...
I am never sure whether I should lament the state of the world or be complacent about it. For on the one hand everything is going to the dogs and on the other I am a happy man. Part of my happiness derives, of course, from intimations of approaching apocalypse: There is nothing quite like them ...
Although France is on the same downward slide as Britain, you can tell that it has not yet descended quite as far because it did not win as many medals in the Olympic Games as Britain. Nevertheless, it won more such medals in these Olympics than it ever had before, which is irrefutable proof of its ...
Once again the only country of any size that, as far as I can see, emerges from the Olympic Games with any credit is India. Accounting for something like a sixth of the world's population, it had not"the last time I looked at the table"won a single medal in any event. This proves that, at ...
The recent events in Turkey interested me in part because I am about to pay my annual visit to that country. I always go to the same place, in which, though it is very Westernized, I have noticed over the years that the muezzins"or rather, the recordings of muezzins"have grown louder, and ...
It is hardly surprising that newspapers nowadays more and more resemble magazines that are produced weekly or monthly instead of daily. With modern technology they can hardly any longer be the first to break news; as their circulations fall and journalists are "let go""to use a ...
For reasons unnecessary to go into, I once found myself at a loose end for a few months on the island of Jersey in the English Channel. For something to do I went into the archives and researched a book about three murders that were committed in Jersey in the space of three months in the middle of ...
When I was a boy I had a classmate (with whom my relations were neither particularly friendly nor particularly unfriendly) whose ambition was to be a taxidermist. He gave us to understand that he knew already how to stuff a weasel, a dog, or a cat, but he wanted to move on to bigger game such as ...
I care nothing for football (soccer to Americans), but I was pleased when Portugal won the European Cup last Sunday. I would have preferred it to be Liechtenstein or San Marino, or best of all Vatican City"that is to say, the smallest country possible. But at least Portugal is not a large ...
