Here's a marketing idea for party spinners in search of a new angle as the current Rag, Tag and Bobtail electoral race enters the home straight: hedgehogs. Few animals have such a devoted and impassioned human constituency, and yet, according...
Read moreIt is time to look the miserabilists in the eye and declare that, yes, our great country has indeed changed over the past 13 years. Everywhere one looks there are new opportunities for investment and adventure. Once, at this time...
Read moreEmitting a mighty belch, nature has grounded us. Our busy plans, large and small, our vaunted technologies, our governments and economies have all been made to seem rather puny beside that quaint and old-fashioned thing from the geography text-books, a...
Read moreSomething horrible has happened to that dapper and dignified theatre critic, Quentin Letts. Attending the first night of the hippie musical Hair, currently being revived at the Gielgud Theatre, he briefly and unpleasantly found himself at the centre of the...
Read moreJust one now and then, a review appears which takes a step back from the book, film or play under consideration and makes a wider, more significant point. A case in point is Walter Kirn’s recent review in the...
Read moreIt is truly bizarre that as the economy spirals ever deeper into the red, one group of highly privileged men and women become increasingly wealthy from the public purse – and no one seems to give a damn. MPs may...
Read moreThe celebrity recluse Charles Saatchi occupies a peculiar position in our culture. Once he was a retiring, powerful man who avoided any kind of exposure to the public eye. Then, when his gallery reached its 20th anniversary, it was announced...
Read moreTo get a sense of the real news, of stories which have not been efficiently shaped and varnished for public consumption by the metropolitan media, it is often a good idea to read local papers. There, the apparently small events...
Read moreThere are moments in one's life when a powerful curiosity about family origins begins to niggle. An urge to talk to older relations about interestingly eccentric great aunts is one symptom of this malaise; researching one's family tree on the...
Read moreThe local council has produced a largely, brightly-coloured sticker reading 'SLOW DOWN IN OUR VILLAGE' for all residents to stick on their wheelie-bins. Almost all of them have, so that once week anyone driving in the area will have this...
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