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Bang for your Bucks
‘Do you shoot much’ asked Edward Walters, manager of the West London Shooting School (1901), the oldest shooting school in the world. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I prefer to see the dogs work.’ This was...
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Port in a storm
Once I’d Googled Trancoso and seen the words ‘boho’ and ‘Naomi Campbell’ attached to it, I didn’t want to go. ‘Jeremy, you’ll love it,’ everyone argued. ‘It’s fabulous. You’re so lucky! Naomi! Mario...
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Fantasy Islands
First, we flew to the celebrity fantasy island of St Barts, one of the four French islands comprising the French West Indies. (The other three are Guadaloupe, St Martin and Martinique.) I was feeling...
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Smoke ring
The nominees for Spectator Cigar Smoker of the Year 2014 were: Ricky Gervais, Ralph Fiennes, Laurence Fishburne, Boris Becker, Jeremy Irons, Michael Caine, Boris Johnson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And...
View ArticleFollow my grandsons on the trail of the last bear in England
I was looking after Oscar, my five-and-a-half-year-old grandson, for the day. We’d played football in the garden, then we’d come indoors and played three games of chess, one game of Battleships, and...
View ArticleFarewell, white ovoid exhaustion-inducing tablets; hello, West Ham’s...
Every morning for the past two years, on waking, I’ve reached out for the white plastic tub on the bedside table, shaken out four oval white tablets into the lid, tossed them into my mouth, and washed...
View ArticleHappiness is a chainsaw and a maul in the rain and the mud
It rained all day long last Friday in Provence, and it rained all night, and on Saturday morning it was still raining. The rain fell out of a lowering, field-grey blanket of a sky. After breakfast and...
View ArticleWhy Jesus sometimes plays a very long game
We closed the last page of a gruesome, thrilling picture book called The Day Louis Got Eaten and said our prayers. Our prayers are always the same. We ask Jesus to bless as many people known to us as...
View ArticleCurry and Modafinil with Winston Churchill
The bar at the Special Forces club has the marvellous rule for newcomers that they should talk to the person on their right. So I was standing at the end of the bar in the Special Forces club, ordering...
View ArticleAutumn is the season of magic mushrooms and psychedelic maple trees
The fag end of October. Dark evenings. My smelly old Barbour. Chopping and splitting wood. Uncanny stillnesses. Psychedelic maple trees. The thin winter piping of robins. Sodden leaves clinging to the...
View ArticleSociety Rocks – and rolls
She was dying for a mad night out, she said, so where was I going to take her? I know, I said. If they’re playing tonight, we’ll go and see Society Rocks, the most electrifying covers band I know....
View Article‘I’m a racist. My sister’s a racist. We’re all racists here.’
My sister has a new man in her life: Henry, 60. He lives in a gay hotel. Or rather, it was a gay hotel in the era when homosexuality was illegal; now the Victorian seaside villa is empty save for my...
View ArticleAll hail to the Stig’s mum’s Seat Ibiza TDI Sport
The car: a ’06 rosso red Seat Ibiza 1.9 TDI Sport, bought three weeks ago from a man who had bought the car from the Stig’s mum. If the Stig, with all his motoring experience, had carefully chosen the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bang for your Bucks
‘Do you shoot much’ asked Edward Walters, manager of the West London Shooting School (1901), the oldest shooting school in the world. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I prefer to see the dogs work.’ This was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Port in a storm
Once I’d Googled Trancoso and seen the words ‘boho’ and ‘Naomi Campbell’ attached to it, I didn’t want to go. ‘Jeremy, you’ll love it,’ everyone argued. ‘It’s fabulous. You’re so lucky! Naomi! Mario...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fantasy Islands
First, we flew to the celebrity fantasy island of St Barts, one of the four French islands comprising the French West Indies. (The other three are Guadaloupe, St Martin and Martinique.) I was feeling...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Smoke ring
The nominees for Spectator Cigar Smoker of the Year 2014 were: Ricky Gervais, Ralph Fiennes, Laurence Fishburne, Boris Becker, Jeremy Irons, Michael Caine, Boris Johnson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And...
View ArticleFollow my grandsons on the trail of the last bear in England
I was looking after Oscar, my five-and-a-half-year-old grandson, for the day. We’d played football in the garden, then we’d come indoors and played three games of chess, one game of Battleships, and...
View ArticleFarewell, white ovoid exhaustion-inducing tablets; hello, West Ham’s...
Every morning for the past two years, on waking, I’ve reached out for the white plastic tub on the bedside table, shaken out four oval white tablets into the lid, tossed them into my mouth, and washed...
View ArticleHappiness is a chainsaw and a maul in the rain and the mud
It rained all day long last Friday in Provence, and it rained all night, and on Saturday morning it was still raining. The rain fell out of a lowering, field-grey blanket of a sky. After breakfast and...
View Article
