Portrait of the week: barbecues are banned, Burnham is fooled and Farage wins Clacton
Home The temperature reached 38.1ºC at Kew Gardens, Surrey. In the West Midlands a wildfire at Stourbridge burnt down 19…
Jason Arday’s tragic death is no reason to silence the press
Physicians and the Samaritans warn against attributing suicide to a single cause. Doing so simplifies a complex tragedy. Those who…
Letters: universities have always been a little crazy
Universities’ challenge Sir: I have spent more than three decades in academia and so Lara Brown (‘Alma madder’, 15 August)…
How often do eclipses occur?
Star turn Britain experienced a solar eclipse but not the total eclipse visible in Iceland and Spain. How often do…
Farage needs to decide if he wants to govern – or just campaign
Nigel Farage’s likely victory in the Clacton by-election will be a hollow one. The major parties boycotted the contest: of…
Letters: Cambridge University is not a victim
After Arday Sir: Lara Brown scathingly condemns Cambridge University’s acceptance of Jason Arday’s credentials (‘The fabulist’, 8 August). That it…
Letters: ‘The voice of a beleaguered Middle England’ – readers say goodbye to Rod
My all-time hero Sir: I was gutted to learn of the early death of one of my all-time heroes (8…
How much water is lost to leaks?
Diverse academia Jason Arday was heralded as Cambridge’s youngest-ever black professor when appointed professor of sociology of education in 2023.…
Cambridge has fallen
‘What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford,’ A.A. Milne said in 1939, ‘is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels impelled…
Letters: the insanity of Labour’s attack on private schools
Bad education Sir: Lara Brown (‘Class warfare’, 1 August) lays bare the baleful consequences – intended and unintended – of…
Burnham is boldly going nowhere
‘Space: the final frontier.’ Six decades since Captain James T. Kirk first uttered those words, American enthusiasm for star-trekking is…
How many people drown in Britain?
Common ground The Commonwealth Games began as the British Empire Games in 1930, yet they did not originate in Britain.…
How to approach women successfully
Rights and wrongs Sir: As one of those centre-left weirdos who reads your magazine to see what the other side…
Can Burnham end rough sleeping?
Lost counties Rutland is to be abolished for the second time, having first been taken off the map in 1974…
Burnham is already drifting towards defeat
Nothing so became Keir Starmer’s premiership as his leaving of it. Farewell remarks outside Downing Street, unpunctuated by the odious…
Letters: Bring back hat wearing
That’s the spirit Sir: What a wonderful young man Michael Simmons is (‘Sick of it’, 18 July). His stubborn refusal…
