A bright young correspondent has chided me for being a touch frivolous. Aren’t I selling myself short, he asks? Tapping this out in the main saloon of an oligarch’s yacht, for it to be winged off by satellite, I am in good condition to reflect ruefully on these remarks. Read more ›

Lots of people have been e-mailing me for advice about surviving a recession. Indeed, it’s an interesting question. I have often said how lucky people are to be well-off and in a world with rising expectations. What’s my message for a world of falling expectations? Read more ›

The good news is that I am more often being asked for spiritual guidance than for business guidance. After all, our hearts matter more than our wallets. Still, various bad things flow from this crunch, meltdown, recession - whatever. For a start, I shan’t make as much money. Besides, before the impending recession, people didn’t come to me because they were deeply, deeply fearful. Now they do. Read more ›

A memoir by novelist A M Homes, a documentary on coroner Shiya Ribowsky and the disinterment of anglo-Catholic Cardinal Newman have combined to make me ponder the business of our connection with the remains of the dead. What’s odd is that modern technology seems to make us more medieval than ever. Read more ›

Robert Harris’ thriller The Ghost is a brilliant lark. It succeeds because you could enjoy it without knowing much about Tony Blair, Cherie Blair, Anji Hunter and all the other people who have been described as the reality on which Harris has spun a fictional web. But there are some quite big gaps in Harris’s satire. Read more ›

When it comes to hide-aways, retreats, sanctuaries, I’m you’re man. They are, after all, where I have lived most of my adult life. I dreamed of them for most of my childhood, when my head was filled with Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe. So I warmed instantly to Francesco da Mosto’s Croatian lighthouse. Read more ›

Actually, as a celibate male, I don’t like Nazi sex. Or perhaps I should say: I’ve never had it so I wouldn’t know. But I do think it’s important to defend people’s sexual fantasies. I’ll go further. I think right-minded people need to stand by people who like Nazi sex. One should stand with them in their liking it. Read more ›

I imagine married men find Francesco da Mosto rather tiresome. He purrs and growls like a muscular old tabby cat - obviously one well-used to prowling the alleys of his native Venice. And used, too, one somehow supposes, to having his way with female felines. Good territory for a bit of jealousy, then. In my own case, I envy much of his solo life, as in his new TV series Francesco’s Mediterranean Voyage. Read more ›