Friday, 30 January 2015

The colour of old brown sherry

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Madge Bettany was good to look at. She was slight to the verge of thinness, with a well-poised head covered by a mop of curly dark brown hai...
Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Labyrinthine tales of faction-fighting and off-the-record press briefings that reminded me of nothing so much as the British Labour Party

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Azhar, they told me, was not the meek and inoffensive character he seemed, a point they illustrated by recounting labyrinthine tales of fac...
Wednesday, 14 January 2015

If men's standing in the world could be toppled by an ill-advised choice of hat, English literature would be dramatically changed

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There is true art in it, this command of tea and dinner tables; this animating correctness. Men may congratulate themselves for writing tru...
Friday, 26 December 2014

Pussy Galore ... can scarcely be taken for standing for 'the eternal feminine'

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In every  story it is, of course, a different woman, each given a flip, thowaway, double-entendre -type name such as Pussy Galore, Honeychil...
Friday, 28 November 2014

To be fair, Joseph isn't stupid; he's barmy.

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The Government seems to be in mess. The country is full of intelligent Jews. Why, therefore, must Mrs Thatcher employ three really stupid on...
Wednesday, 26 November 2014

Constantinople is the great capital, the city, the attraction and the hope of all the Hellenes

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In 1844, the Prime Minister Collettis in a speech to the constituent assembly revealed the place of Constantinople in Greek hearts and minds...
Tuesday, 25 November 2014

Europeans who regarded a country as a career rather than a cause

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Like the Mavrocordato, the Testa refused to be imprisoned in one nationality. They were an extreme example of a once common phenomenon: Eur...