old age
Is there ever a good time to discuss the care of the elderly?
The young are too busy enjoying themselves, the middle-aged are loath to initiate it and the elderly themselves can’t always take part, but it’s a subject sorely in need of public discourse
High life
New York Living a life of pleasure is fun, but it can also become tiresome. Living an ethical life of…
The good, the bad and the cocky
Clint Eastwood is 91; Cry Macho may well be his last film. Or maybe not. He has, after all, been…
Where is my mind?
The Father is an immensely powerful film about dementia starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, who was asleep in his bed in…
High life
New York Orthodox Easter Sunday came late in May this year, and I spent it at an old friend’s Fifth…
Deliciously dark
I Care a Lot is a deliciously dark comic thriller that You’ll Enjoy a Lot. It’s heartless. It’s vicious. It’s…
Battle for the boomers
This year’s presidential election may see a new pattern that may prove disastrous for the GOP. Former vice president Joe…
High life
Gstaad Birthdays at my age are for the birds, but always a good excuse for a party. Messages of…
An age-old problem
‘I’m getting rather tired of me,’ begins Jan Morris in one of the diary entries in Thinking Again, almost certainly…
Low life
For the last four years of her long life, this upstairs room and this magnificent sea view belonged to Mrs…
My soulmate Brian Sewell
Romy Somerset is the sweetest, nicest young girl in London. She’s also my goddaughter and I remember, during her christening…
The extraordinary life of 104-year-old dancer Eileen Kramer
It’s not often you hear the voice of a 104-year-old on the radio. You’re even less likely to hear one…
My life as nurse, chief cook and bottle washer for my mother
My fifth week confined to barracks as nurse, chief cook and bottle washer. I drive to the supermarket about twice…
The strange people who keep a nightly vigil over my mother
To begin with it was mice. The house was overrun with them. She saw them out of the corner of…
It is a sin to die in the Land of the Depraved
New York Remember when the internet, Twitter, Facebook and other such useless gimmicks were supposed to usher in an era…
Nine angst-ridden men
‘Insufficiency’ is a favourite David Szalay word. The narrator of his previous novel, Spring, suffered from ‘insufficiency of feeling’; in…
Why we need migrants
It’s not about economics. It’s about our snobbish, slobbish culture
Touching the void
Scholarly filmgoers may recall a movement that sprouted from Danish soil called Dogme 95. It worked to a Spartan set…
Soon we will accept that useless lives should end
Throughout the short life of the Assisted Dying Bill which failed last week in the Commons, the ‘faith community’ (a…
Long life
I remember the first time that someone stood up and offered me a seat on the London Underground. It was…
High life
The secret of eternal youth, according to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, is arrested development, and the penny dropped last week. The…
For the term of our unnatural lives
‘To die of age is a rare, singular and extra-ordinary death’, wrote Montaigne, ‘and so much less natural than others:…
High life
Porto Cheli I have been thinking about my children and my own strange boyhood as I gaze up at the…
Dignity? Forget it!
It takes a special sort of talent to be able to make drawings of your own 97-year-old mother on her…
