“It is, I think, a decent custom which prescribes that we shall say nothing but good about the dead.” So wrote Alistair Cooke, in April…

It has been a truly terrible month in England on three counts: the economy, the weather and sport.  This is what happens whenever I leave…

Arguments for and against same-sex marriage, currently being heard in the United States Supreme Court, seem to have reduced the esteemed justices to a state…

Tucson, Arizona greets us with the same ‘chilly’ weather we’ve just suffered in Florida.  “It’s not even 80 degrees out there,” the man at the…

Crossing the California state line, the first place in which we set foot is Jacumba, a virtual ghost town located a couple of miles off…

America is a warm and welcoming country – once you’ve managed to break into the place.  At Miami International Airport this takes us about two…

I love to travel.  It’s the traveling I can’t stand. M and I are off to the United States on Thursday – to Florida, Arizona…

Gloom seems to have become Hollywood’s ambience du jour.  The last two films I saw, Les Miserables and Lincoln, were both bathed in sepulchral tones. …

A fox in a London suburb having bitten off a baby’s finger, we can now expect an outbreak of tabloid hysteria about the pointy-nosed menace…

The phrase ‘proportionate response’ – once used almost exclusively in a military context – nowadays gets bandied about in all kinds of situations.  And increasingly,…