So much to enjoy in the great outdoors
	5:19pm Wed 9 Jul 08
	Wimbledon and the British Grand Prix drew huge crowds at the weekend, though most of the fans were inveterate stay-at-homes slumped in front of the box. Those who prefer more sociable pursuits had a rich variety of big events to choose from in Oxfordshire. I took full advantage of the opportunities, with visits to Henley Royal Regatta on Friday, Cornbury Music Festival on Saturday and Cowley Road Carnival on Sunday.

Lunch with the ladies of the No. 1 agency

8:30am Thursday 3rd July 2008

On a perfect weekend for parties in the garden, I was lucky enough to be invited to two such events. The first, on Saturday, was a well-managed celebration in the beautiful grounds of Magdalen College, marking the 550th anniversary of William of Waynflete's signing of the institution's foundation charter on June 12, 1485. (Chris Koenig writes about this today on Page 21). More than 2,000 guests enjoyed a delicious tea and a programme of events that included chauffeured punt rides, guided climbs up the 167 uneven steps of the tower, two organ recitals and an affecting performance in the cloisters (Thomas Tallis, Thomas Weelkes, Thomas Morley and others) by the college choir under its director, Bill Ives.

Liddle lays into the classics

9:30am Thursday 26th June 2008

I consider journalist Rod Liddle a Good Thing. His poisonous hatred of Peter Mandelson greatly appeals to me, despite the homophobic overtones to his diatribe in this week's Sunday Times: "He would not know a principle if it accosted him in a Brazilian nightclub wearing a G-string and a handlebar moustache."

	So sorry that I put my foot firmly in it
	8:58am Thu 26 Jun 08
	I apologise for my unexplained absence from this page for the past two weeks. This was occasioned not, as might be supposed, by my having headed off in search of summer sunshine but by circumstances that could adequately have been summed up by an adaptation of the phrase that used to appear all too often on the page of the Spectator where Jeffrey Bernard's Low Life column ought to have been: "Christopher Gray is unwell".

Keeping up with the Joneses

3:13pm Wednesday 4th June 2008

"SIR A Bournemouth taxi driver has lost his licence because in a test he failed to use apostrophes correctly. If this trend continues, how long before not only grocers but three quarters of the population become unemployed?"

	How useful to know all the right people!
	3:03pm Wed 4 Jun 08
	It is refreshingly honest of Ferdinand Mount to offer so blatant a confession of success achieved through nepotism as that contained in his admirable autobiography, Cold Cream (Bloomsbury, £20). Having explained how, in youth, he landed a job on the Daily Sketch through the influence of a family friend "Esmond" (Viscount Harmsworth to the rest of us), he describes how this set the pattern for his life: "Every time I actually applied for a job, I failed ignominiously to get it. If there was any question of sending in a CV or undergoing a comprehensive interview, I was done for. My only avenue of survival was personal recommendation, my only method of arrival the parachute. I lived on the oxygen of influence."

Was this Mystic Mogg getting it wrong again?

3:00pm Wednesday 4th June 2008

This week's move of The Times's leader column from the centre to the front of the newspaper was much commented upon - well, at any rate in The Times itself. A self-congratulatory two-page article on Monday recalled celebrated leader articles supplied in the past by 'The Thunderer' (like the BBC with its 'Auntie' The Times can't resist the twee use of its own nickname).

	Sexy stage antics for Narnia's Susan
	3:19pm Wed 14 May 08
	Daniel Radcliffe might be said to have established the pattern by taking on a daring stage role in Equus far removed from his image as the screen's Harry Potter. Now Anna Popplewell, who plays the goody-goody heroine in the Chronicles of Narnia films (pictured), is making a similar move by starring later this month in a new production of the controversial play Spring Awakening in which she plays a girl made pregnant at the age of 14. While the extent of her public exposure will not be as great as the in-the-buff Daniel (presumably), she will nevertheless find herself doing and saying things on the Oxford Playhouse stage that would cause her Narnia character Susan Pevensie to shudder in horror.

	Cinema plus help Moyles to gain on Wogan
	3:19pm Wed 7 May 08
	"Titans head for battle of breakfast radio," said a headline last week in The Times. Who are those titans? Radio 2's Terry Wogan, it would seem, and his Radio 1 rival Chris Moyles (who is at least of titanic proportions). They are struggling to see who can gain the largest breakfast audience. Sir Terry at present has 8.1 million, while Moyles is closing up with 7.72 million.

	Our critics praised while London's reviewers damned
	3:16pm Wed 7 May 08
	The 50th anniversary of the first performances of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party is being celebrated by a new production of the play which opens on Monday at the Lyric, Hammersmith. Now recognised as one of the 20th century landmarks in European theatre, the piece was a notorious flop when first aired at the same theatre in 1958. National critics, to their shame, put the boot in mercilessly. The Guardian called it "half-gibberish and lunatic ravings"; the Daily Telegraph pointed to an author "who wallows in symbols and revels in obscurity".

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