Articles
Ultra-right gains ground in the Netherlands
Geert Wilders's Party for Freedom with its anti-Islam platform wins a historic vote, causing consternation among the Dutch Muslims.
Manipulating the message so it sticks in your brain
Read or listen attentively and you quickly work out how much care goes into the word content in advertisements of all kinds.
As fortune would have it, today the words fit perfectly
Overwrite is a verb with three possible meanings, according to my Concise Oxford English Dictionary, and none of them is the one I had in mind as I considered possible topics for this week's column.
Proud to be British - and proud to antagonise the BNP
One of Britain's top 100 Asian businessmen, Mo Chaudry hopes to expose the far-right political party.
The cast is assembled. Only the dirty deed is missing-
The travelling companions I met in China could inhabit an Agatha Christie novel.
Pass the couscous - and the foie gras
In a working class Parisian quarter, despite all the signs that times are hard, it is possible to wander into an Algerian-owned butcher's shop and buy halal foie gras.
Beauty can sometimes be in the ear of the beholder
What one listener hears as snappy or persuasive, another finds inelegant, unconvincing or insincere.
The cute and cuddly side of Chinese diplomacy
Though born in captivity in the US, the pandas Tai Shan and Mei Lan are regarded internationally as no less Chinese than the president, Hu Jintao.
Softening life's blows with a little understatement
When I was young, my family bought groceries at a little corner shop owned, appropriately, by Mr Corner.
The UAE makes a great starting point for a stamp-collector
The UAE is a great place from which to collect stamps - in your passport.
When it came to saying sorry, Frank Sinatra did it his way
Far from being the hardest word, sorry is sometimes a rather easy one. Whether it is always used with sincerity is another matter.
Why Jagger's double negative does not mar my Satisfaction
Do the standards of English in pop music matter? The answer, my friend, is whifflin' in the wind ?
For football fans, it's important to look on the bright side
A talk with a cheerful cabbie proves uplifting for one football fan.
An ostrobogulous journey through a godwottery of words
Our fascination with words, where they came from and how they should and should not be used, is not a modern phenomenon.
Common behaviour is no substitute for common courtesy
Common courtesy often means simply following through with what one promised to do. And that means answering emails from known quantities.
