One consequence of working from home is that mistakes are made. People miss messages; spinning plates fall to the ground; the falcon cannot hear the falconer; a New Yorker journalist broadcasts his genitals to everyone else on a Zoom call. Much has rightly been...
People used to send more seasonal greetings cards in times gone by, but in December 1974, Phil and Joyce Kunz received a particularly bountiful crop. Some were simple offerings of “Happy Christmas” but others contained long letters. There was also a complaint from the...
The race to find an effective vaccine appears to be on the home straight. The same cannot be said of the race to roll it out everywhere. Preparing to present a BBC radio series titled How to Vaccinate the World, I’ve been looking at the route ahead. It is less of a...
Self-help is a much-mocked section of the bookstore, and in truth there is much to mock. However I have a soft spot for certain self-help books that I have found useful over the years. These ones get my vote. The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. A nostalgic pick,...
We said our goodbyes to my mother on Christmas Eve 1996. She had died earlier in December after a long and painful illness, but when the end came it was sudden. It can’t have been straightforward to arrange a funeral service on Christmas Eve, the churches being put to...
For a road sign to be a road sign, it needs to be placed in proximity to traffic. Inevitably, it is only a matter of time before someone drives into the pole. If the pole is sturdy, the results may be fatal. The 99% Invisible City, a delightful new book about the...
If you and I were to bid against each other in a charity auction for, say, dinner with Princess Marie of Denmark, little would have to be explained about how the details of the auction work. One of us values the prospect more, would pay more, and would win. But if you...
Irving Fisher, who a century ago was one of the most famous economists on the planet, once declared: “The sagacious businessman is constantly forecasting.” Well, perhaps. But how sagacious is it to be constantly forecasting, when the forecasts seem so often to be...
Covid in the UK hasn’t been quite as polarised as Brexit or the political landscape of the United States. But it is polarised enough. At one extreme are the zero-Covid advocates; at the other, the lockdown sceptics. Who is right? Some lockdown sceptics have advanced a...