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“What is a broken image link, Andrea?”
In fact, I was chary about uploading it into this article. Why? Read on. The image was originally at the top of The Madness of Crowds, an article written by Stoker in July 2024. Then, in May, Vincent Guy asked politely why “a strange bunch of cars” had "parked themselves” across the top of his February 2021 post, How I found out I was Jewish.
Richard Pooley
3 min read


Rousham: Beauty and the Beast
Most of the early part of my career was spent working for a City tycoon who built up in fifteen years a very significant business. Eventually he judged that it had peaked and agreed its sale. One evening he called me into his properly tycoonish office (view high over the Thames, his own Regency furniture, enough space if needed to address all his loyal employees and simultaneously swing several cats) to discuss a few loose ends; but then got to the point: “Stoker, if you ha
Stoker
5 min read


No Fire Without Smoke
The British generation now drawing its old age pensions differs markedly in at least one respect from Generation X or Z or Q, or whatever now supports the Green Party. Us oldies spent most of our young lives smelling of slightly stale tobacco, with ash trays (occasionally even emptied) in every room of the house, and at every opportunity, flicking lighters for a quick draw. And there were plenty of opportunities: in the lecture hall, on buses and trains, in aircraft (later,
Stoker
5 min read


In the UK it is the Pot which is Melting
For those old enough to remember, the song Melting Pot was the debut single released in 1969 by UK pop group, Blue Mink. Although it has since been banned from the airways for “offensive racist language”, it was in fact a hymn to racial tolerance and multiculturism. This ‘hippy’ call for blending and racial integration was banned in 2019 as “likely to cause offence” after just ONE complaint to Ofcom when the song was played on ‘golden oldies’ station Gold. Frankly I never lik
Lynda Goetz
8 min read


Vanbrugh Revisited
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
Stoker
5 min read
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