In a new monthly series, Spectator Life will be bringing you facts, stories and items of general wonderment associated with the month ahead. Welcome to July – where we learn what ‘Twix’ is short for, why England’s World Cup-winning footballers painted white stripes on to their boots and how many times Charles and Diana met before their wedding…
Our journey around London’s postcode areas has reached its final destination: WC. One of Evelyn Waugh’s female friends always insisted on referring to it in full as ‘West Central’, because she said ‘WC’ had ‘indelicate associations’. We’ll learn what happened at Spike Milligan’s memorial service, why Agatha Christie married an archaeologist and where you can find the official definition of an inch…
How Walford in EastEnders got its name, why Isaac Newton visited bars in disguise and what happened when the IRA parked on a double yellow line. Our tour of London’s postcode areas has reached its penultimate stop – who fancies an E?
How Rod Stewart kept his hair in place, why the BBC gave its presenters electric shocks and what Paul Gascoigne shot with an air rifle: this month’s London postcode area is N – buckle up for another trivia-packed tour…
Our tour of the trivia behind London’s postcode areas has reached SE, where we find rock stars being embalmed, P.G. Wodehouse reporting on cricket and Westminster Bridge being painted green for a very specific reason. Oh, and Winston Churchill gets a hat-trick of mentions…
This month our trivia-inspired tour of London’s postcode areas reaches NW, where Tim Burton snored, Madness caused an earthquake and Desmond Tutu asked policemen for directions even though he knew where he was going…
Ferrets at Buckingham Palace, swearing at Wimbledon and the real-life incident that inspired Del Boy’s fall through the bar – it can only mean that our trivia tour of London’s postcode areas has reached SW…
Golden pineapples, hotel rooms named after spies and the only curved piece of glass in the Gherkin – yes, it’s EC, the second in our series looking at the quirky history of London postcode areas. Step this way for some Square Mile trivia…
It’s the area that unites James Bond, Rick Wakeman and both Queen Elizabeths. In the first of our series looking at the quirky history and fascinating trivia of London’s postcode areas, we explore the delights to be found in W (West) – everything from fake houses to shaky newsreaders to dukes who are women… Answer: the other Tube station whose name contains all five vowels is Mansion House.
It’s almost a shock to admit it, but this year’s gift books aren’t bad at all. It’s even possible that, should you be given one of these for Christmas by the aunt who hates you or the brother who merely despises you, you might actually enjoy it — more than the acrylic scarf or the comedy socks that I always get from my least favourite relatives, anyway. What with one thing and another, there are roughly four million new books by comedians, all written during lockdown when there was nothing else to do. The best I read was Bob Mortimer’s sweet, elegiac memoir And Away… (Gallery Books, £20), which tells
It takes some agility to shoot yourself in the foot and saw off the branch you’re sitting on, while hoisting yourself with your own petard, all at the same time; but that is what I shall now attempt. In this analysis of general election commentary I shall argue that over the last two months Britain has been all but choked by a surfeit of comment and analysis on the general election. Can any reader remember when there was an election that produced so much? Or, in the end, produced it to so little useful purpose? If last Christmas Day one had fallen into a coma only to awake on 8 May, thus
Nancy Mitford would not call them ‘toilet books’, that’s for certain. Loo books? Lavatory books? One or two people I know favour ‘bog books’. And having written one or two books myself that teeter on the edge of frivolity, I know that for your book to be kept in what Americans call the ‘bathroom’ is essentially a compliment. As long as it’s there to be read, of course. Oddly enough, the two best loo books of the year I have already and separately reviewed in these pages. The Most of Nora Ephron (Doubleday, £20, Spectator Bookshop, £16.50) is an immaculately chosen compilation of the late American humorist’s journalism, blogs, meditations
