Anglo-American

The Seduction of Snow
It’s snowing outside my office window as I write these words. That’s not been unusual this winter: I live in the Catskill Mountains, where snowfall should be prodigious: we have...
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February 3, 2009

A very British Birthday Brunch
Heinz baked Beans on toast with HP sauce, Boddingtons and Sam Smiths and Newcastle Brown, angel cake with strawberries, Rose’s chocolates, Walkers’ shortbread, elderberry cordial, home-made scones, imported Wensleydale and...
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April 29, 2008

Five Years
The 5th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq has caused many editors in American media to commission op-ed “re-views.” The New York Times published nine short pieces last Sunday from...
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March 21, 2008

American La(n)d
Welcoming 73 new citizens – myself among them – to the United States on Thursday November 29, Judge Lawrence E. Khan, the Presiding United States District Court Judge, said the...
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November 30, 2007

Bolan’s Birthday: Life’s A Gas
Saturday afternoon, 4pm. I’m at the second birthday party for Jean-Luc Le Du’s wine store on Washington Street in Manhattan. I’m greeted at the door by Andy Shernoff, founding member...
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October 3, 2007

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
I know a few people who would like to issue a fresh Declaration of Independence right now – and I count among them the significant majority of American residents who...
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July 4, 2007

Gill-igan’s Island
Sunday’s NY Times printed a couple of Op-Ed essays from prominent Brits, examining Tony Blair’s legacy. A. A. Gill, in discussing why Blair leaves office “loathed, mocked and despised,” turned...
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June 25, 2007

The Electric Restaurant Acid Test
From Notes of a Gastronome: The Taming of the Chef in The New Yorker Why did they seek out the substandard, the industrial, and the unhealthy: prawn cocktail crisps, say,...
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April 4, 2007