With his lazy, effortless elegance, few would dispute that David Gower was the most stylish batsman English cricket has produced. But does he count as a great?... In a recent post on my blog The Old Batsman, I argued that the last indisputably great batsmen that England had managed to produce ... Read More...

In the early 1960s two behavioural psychologists attempted to bring up a child in an environment devoid of pictures. But what, exactly, did they prove?... Imagine if, in infancy, your parents made every effort to ensure that you never saw a picture. This is what happened to the anonymous subject of ... Read More...

Steerforth finds that some things can be so boring they exert a curious fascination... There is a point at which things can be so boring that they become interesting again. That applies to people too. When I was a student, I had a temporary job as an assistant in a reference ... Read More...

In this week's poetry feature, W H Auden and his debt to Robert Frost... At this time of year small piles of sand begin to appear along the seams of the sidewalks. The ants have awakened, and have begun their work. Who knows what is going on beneath our feet? Complicated ... Read More...

Even looking at the picture above sets my teeth on edge. This week's weird Wikipedia article looks into the science behind the world's most annoying noise... Scraping a blackboard with fingernails produces a sound which most people find extremely irritating. The basis of this innate reaction has been studied in the ... Read More...

This week, Frank gets down with the gnomes... As I wander about the world, or my small part of it, one thing I find peculiarly distressing is the number of persons of frantic mien who rush up to me and clutch at my lapels, beseeching me. “Mr Key, Mr Key!” they plead, ... Read More...

Nige remembers one of the great entertainers... The Dumbartonshire-born Jack Buchanan (2 April 1891 – 20 October 1957) was one of the great comic actors and song and dance men of his time, and, to quote no less an authority than The Times, 'the last of the knuts'. The what? you ... Read More...

We may like to think we're savvy travellers, not typical tourists, but things can go horribly wrong... I’ll never forget the moment we realized we were lost – in rural Mexico, neither of us with a word of Spanish, our cruise ship a long bus and boat ride away and due ... Read More...

Do you really need a certificate to pontificate about wine?Henry Jeffreys gives his thoughts on booze blogging... A little while ago I was reading the comment section on a wine blog, in which someone had written in to voice his displeasure that people could start blogs and pronounce on wine without ... Read More...

I was twelve when we moved from the city to the country, and soon after that deracinating adventure my father drove us to the National Canine Defence League kennels at West Down, where we acquired a dog. My parents had already secretly sussed out the prime candidate, a mongrel pup ... Read More...