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 ›