Robert Low

Gary Player famously said “the more I practice the luckier I get”. But does this sporting adage work for politicians?

Book review of Peace, They Say by Jay Nordlinger

A new limited-edition paperback documents the charming correspondence between US book collector Robert Vanderbilt and Anthony Powell

Americanisms sullying the English language are rarely harmful — apart from when they insinuate that our politicians are all-powerful

No phrase of Margaret Thatcher caused as much uproar, and was so wilfully misinterpreted, as “There is no such thing as society.”  As usual with famous quotes, she didn’t quite say that, but she was pretty close. Her exact words came in an interview with Woman’s Own in 1987: “I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people, and people look to themselves first.”