• The Daily Telegraph
• Le Figaro
• The New York Post
• L’Orient-Le Jour
• L'Osservatore Romano
• The Irish Times
• Conservative Home
• The Jewish Chronicle

• FAZ / Eng.
• NZZ / Eng.
• Magyar Nemzet
• ABC.es
• The Catholic Herald
• Il Foglio
• London Playbook
• Financial Times

France

Mitteleuropa

Knickerbockers

Argentina

The Levant

Africa

Cape of Good Hope

Netherlands

Scandinavia

Québec

India

Muscovy

Germany

Tonight at dinner we frightened the bejants and bejantines (first years) with our knowledge of random facts and history and the Ik tribe of Africa and even managed to engage one of the more comely new maidens in a plot to kidnap the Principal in order to reverse the creation of the new ‘Film Studies’ department and to get a smoking room for Sallies (St. Salvator’s, our hall). After dinner wound to a close we exited our splendid stained-glass-laden wood-panelled dining hall and headed to Jason Dunn’s room for some sherry. He has a very nice decanter and set he picked up dirt cheap from a charity shop. I’ll have to give them a browse sometime soon.

I also got a chance to catch up with Nicholas Vincent at his new abode on Greyfriars Gardens. It’s a beautiful and spacious place, “Victorian design but Georgian proportions” as Nicholas said, and I’ve actually been there before. Under the previous residents it twice acted as a sort of final locus for continued drinking after all the pubs and such had closed. I remember one night I ended up there with a small crowd including one of the wardens here at Sallies who I told I would buy two pints if he got me a place in hall (it worked), while Yaa’ra Barnoon was strumming a tune on the guitar, that most inferior of instruments, the exact opposite of the organ.

Tonight, after catching up via telephone with Rob who’s now teaching at Downside, the indomitable George Irwin, the most endearingly unpleasant person in all of St Andrews, had a little drinks party at which there were a number of usual faces; Phil Evans, Tom Kerr (PMC of the OTC), and Manuel Garces (Greco-Spaniard president of the Boxing Club), now shorn of his iconic sable locks, who spent his long vac cruising the Greek isles and lounging about (not bad). George begrudgingly allowed us access to a desirable bottle of whiskey which was left over from his sister’s recent wedding. (Apparently they were left with over 400 containers of orange juice, for the bucks fizz, and about 100 extra bottles of champagne, amongst other extras). I got a call from Jon Burke inquiring as to whether I was up for more fun and games, but alas the train for London tommorrow morning has encouraged me to call it an early night. Hoping to see a few old faces while I’m down in London, so it should be fun.

Search