Julie Andrews is one of those public figures who, probably through no fault of her own, has become a larger-than-life representative of a range of contemporary clichés. For some, she is the wholesome, faintly sexless Englishwoman, a trilling, skipping optimist...
Read moreIt’s exciting. It’s nothing less than a revolution in the way this country is run. But what exactly is this New Politics we hear so much about? To guide us through the tumultuous political future of Britain, when a wind...
Read moreAdopting her most serious tone, the BBC reporter standing outside Old Bailey intones that the courts had heard of many terrible acts but few were quite as disturbing as what has been revealed over the past few days. What had...
Read moreWhenever a successful woman experiences some kind of career freak-out, the great Having It All debate is re-ignited. Sometimes it is a politician who decides to spend more time with her family who sets the whole thing rolling, sometimes a...
Read moreIn a moment of perfect poetic justice, I have recently been on the receiving end of a mild act of political incorrectness within moments of completing a celebration of politically incorrect songs. With my musical partners Derek Hewitson (Suffolk) and...
Read moreIt is a strange, heady moment. We are at a time of change, yet no one quite knows what that change will bring. It happened in 1979 and in 1997 and, in some form or other, it will happen in...
Read moreWhat exactly is the problem? Why are both major parties struggling to reach any kind of agreement with those sweet, easygoing Liberal Democrats? Here, in an exclusive leak from the negotiations, is a list of what they are currently demanding: Colourful...
Read moreIn one area at least, Gordon Brown has proved himself to be in perfect harmony with the times. When, this week, his privacy was invaded by a Sky News microphone, his view of poor old Mrs Gillian Duffy was not...
Read moreWhat a privilege it was to close Marth Kearney's last Election Lunch on Radio Four's The World At One with Noel Coward's song from the early 1950s 'Bad Times Are Just Around the Corner' - with a little updated chorus...
Read moreHow excited Barry Miles must have been when the news reached him that his new book London Calling: A Counter-Cultural History of London since 1945 was to be a full-page review in a popular Sunday newspaper, the Mail on Sunday,...
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