Features
Paddy power
Transport Secretary and ex-miner Patrick McLoughlin on chasing Ukip and why HS2 won’t be a done deal by the election
The war on beauty
Gardens should be places of pleasure, not eco-correctness
An actor’s notebook
It was one of those weeks. On Monday, I was in four countries: I woke up at crack of dawn…
Stealing history
What do you feel when a survivor of Auschwitz tells you their story?
The hypocrisy game
If anti-gay laws make it wrong to ski in Russia, don’t they also make it wrong to play cricket in Bangladesh?
Venice
For Henry James it was ‘the repository of consolations’. Wordsworth, an earlier visitor, called it ‘the eldest child of liberty’.…
Cameron’s Northern Alliance
He has assembled a group of like-minded Europeans who have a plausible agenda to reshape the EU
Lord Baker’s college days
The former Education Secretary is still remaking the school system at the age of 79
The Labour party at prayer
Believe me, it’s not easy to be a Tory in today’s C of E
The joy of being hated
I know it’s not for everyone, but an online bitch-fight is so bracing
Alfred’s greatest moment
If he hadn’t survived the Twelfth Night raid of 878, England as we know it might never have existed
Art in country houses
Last year 114,000 people flocked to Houghton Hall in north Norfolk for a once-in-a lifetime opportunity. Part of the great…
Putin’s masterplan
Russia is returning as an ideological force in the world – to champion conservative values
this is a message
As I make my way to the greenhouses a seagull kills me in its pure white throat. Quiet in the…
Really wild excuses
The Environment Agency may not be much use to humans, but it does great things for the depressed river mussel
‘A screaming, grievance-hawking shambles’
Welcome to feminism in the age of intersectionality
The church of self-worship
Sunday morning among the atheists
Nuclear fallout
Britain is about to buy the world’s most expensive power station
New York notebook
Bard College in upstate New York, where I teach in the spring semester, is an interesting institution, once better known…
Investment: In safe hands
Investment trusts are coming back into fashion – and rightly so
Investment: Love for shale
Here’s how to get a slice of the fracking action
Investment: America vs gravity
Reality may be about to reassert itself after an extraordinary hot streak
North Devon
It was late September. My wife and I were feeling overworked and overstressed — our mental states not helped by…
this is a message
As I make my way to the greenhouses a seagull kills me in its pure white throat. Quiet in the…
this is a message
As I make my way to the greenhouses a seagull kills me in its pure white throat. Quiet in the…
