Crowd control
Public dissent, from riots to republicans objecting to homage to the Queen, is dealt with by the police, a force…
A lesson in self-publicity
The death of Her Majesty raises the question of a commemoration of her extraordinary years of service. Augustus ruled the…
Plough boy
On retiring from office, Boris Johnson described himself as a sort of Cincinnatus, returning to his plough. This famous story…
Learning on the job
Sir Tony Blair’s Tone-deaf suggestion that Stem subjects should dominate the curriculum of all schools would paradoxically take education back…
The causes of gout
Medical problems come and go in the media, and at the moment the flavour of the month appears to be…
Truss, Sunak and Cicero
As Miss Truss and Mr Sunak spray policies around on a range of topics which they hope will appeal to…
Food for thought
James Howells has spent years trying to persuade Newport council to allow him to spend millions digging up a rubbish…
Holding water
It is clear that the country will soon need a Water Czar. Augustus’s right-hand man Agrippa would be the one…
The unflattering truth
The battle to be PM raises the question: in a functioning democracy, how should arguments be won? Surely, by persuasion.…
Territorial battles
The word ‘colony’ meets with a sharp intake of breath these days, but ‘province’ raises no eyebrows. How very odd.…
The play’s the thing
Last week Lloyd Evans was wondering whether it was about time audiences started booing dramatic productions of which they disapproved.…
Labours of love
An Oxford don has raised the prospect of producing a cocktail of hormone pills that would help you to fall…
First strike
The RMT union is threatening strikes to bring the country to a halt. Such activities have a long history in…
The invention of communism
Nostalgia wars are all the rage at the moment, but an extraordinary example appears to have been missed: a hammer…
Call that a party?
The ancients certainly knew how to put on a celebration. Let us hope the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee comes up to…
Soldiering on
Given Putin’s less than triumphant operation in Chechnya, where the Russian army suffered catastrophic losses, it is hardly surprising that…
Ship shape
The biggest cruise ship yet builthas just been launched, but in like-for-like terms, it comes nowhere near the Syracusia,built c.…
Ancient and modern
Did Vladimir Putin ever use his infamous ‘historical’ account of Russia-Ukraine relations to consider how Ukrainians might react to his…
Power naps
Whatever one thinks of her politics, Angela Rayner is clearly a pretty sporting party, and the joke she made about…
Rough justice
What is a just war? Those who, from St Augustine onwards, have debated the question usually begin with Cicero, the…
Morale support
Commentators talk much about the morale of the Ukrainian troops and the edge that this has given them over the…
Law and orders
St. Petersburg University in Russia is (desperately?) inviting scholars worldwide to a conference in September celebrating Mikhail Speransky. It was…
Rewriting history
Historians in Russia have a long and craven record, now going back centuries, of being economical with the truth about…
A hard act to follow
The Oscar frenzy spent, it is worth reflecting on how easy writers and actors have it these days. The ancient…
Raging against God
Patriarch Kirill is Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’ and Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church; and one of his…
