JOHNSON'S COMMONPLACE BOOK

All this hot weather, which is making men wear shorts, says Alexandra Shulman in The Mail on Sunday. “It’s a terrible look.” Shorts are...

With Reuters, Gall reported from Germany, East Africa, the Congo and South Africa,  coverage superlative stop costs transcendental ran...

MCC relaxed its dress requirements at Lord"s on Wednesday, 'lest men fry in their egg-and-bacon jackets", says Jack Blackburn in The...

Silvered mirror glass did not become widely available until the 1830s.  Before then most people would  go their entire lives without...

God, Who winds our sundials. Lichtenberg, Aphorisms, 1764-99.

A week ago, I asked for a show of hands in a London lecture theatre.  As I suspected, more people in the audience had been to Machu...

‘There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn’. Dr Samuel Johnson

If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone.  A man, Sir, should keep his...

Jeffrey Bernard once wrote that everything he disliked about England was summed up in the phrase "and all the trimmings".

Harry and Paul Present: The Gentlemen's Club, which was written by and starring Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, with guest stars Jim...

Dear friends, Monica and Andre arrived within minutes of me sending them a message telling them that Jeremy was breathing his last.  I'd...

During the run of his play Jeffrey Bernard is unwell in Bath, Keith Waterhouse travelled down from London two or three times a week. When...

Sir Timothy Bevan completed five trans-Atlantic crossings, four in his own boat.  He relished a story of sailing in Rhode Island and...

James Flint won the George Medal when on a cold night in 1941 he swam back into a sinking Handley Page Hampden bomber off the Norfolk...

Poor John Dennis.  In 1709, the playwright devised a novel technology to simulate thunder to accompany his drama Appius and Virginia....