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And so the order went out from the editorial suite on the 51st level: “No more Trump”.  And forty floors below, Stoker pulled up his green eyeshade, moodily pulled his half-written essay on Donald out of the battered Remington, and flung it at the waste paper basket, missing, as always, by a yard. Lolling back in the battered wooden chair which is standard issue to Only Connect scribblers, he surveyed the narrow view, blocked as it was by the soaring tower of Copper House, gl

The family call it “The Birth Certificate”. It is a single page torn out of a red notebook, one of many kept by their ancestor, a doctor in Southsea, England. In them he used to scribble notes about events – April/Engaged…Aug/Married (these in 1885) or any matter which puzzled, amused or inspired him – Geo IV spent his wedding night drunk across the grate. Why? Because he was also trying to earn some money by writing. A doctor in Victorian times had to canvass for patients an

On 28th Dec 2025, we heard of the death of Brigitte Bardot, perhaps one of the greatest sex symbols of the 20th century. Yet fame doesn’t always last: neither my younger wife nor my two youngest daughters had ever heard of her.  But I am glad our editor has such a good memory because he reminded me of a story that I told him more than half a century ago. The story takes me back to 1966, two years before I left school.

To escape the dullness of January and the deep despair of the anti-Trumpers – “He moved the whole thing inside so nobody could see how...

The first pop songs I remember are Mark Wynter singing Venus in Blue Jeans on Top of the Pops, a UK television show featuring the latest...