The Week
Portrait of the Week
Home The BBC was engulfed in doubts after a report by Lord Dyson blamed Martin Bashir for deceiving the late…
Diary
In the New York Times, the celebrated journalist Maureen Dowd describes Crieff as ‘a sleepy town in Scotland’. Well. There…
Letters
Taking care Sir: I agree completely with Leo McKinstry that care for parents should be paid out of their estate…
Fathers and sons
Charles, Prince of Wales, is having a little trouble with his son Harry. Romans knew about difficult offspring. They told…
Barometer
Call to arms Is hugging important to health? A study by Carnegie Mellon University and published in the journal Psychological…
Letters
The Union in peril Sir: Fraser Nelson (‘The great pretender’, 15 May) writes that it has never been easier to…
Fur and feeling
Almost no ancients cared whether animals felt pain or not. The classical Stoic belief that man’s reasoning capacity elevated him…
Diary
‘We humour them when they suggest absurd reforms, we placate them with small material comforts, but we heave sighs of…
Variants and variables
The scare over the Indian variant of coronavirus this week is a taste of what to expect over the next…
Portrait of the week
Home The government made noises about having to delay the lifting of coronavirus restrictions on 21 June in some parts…
Letters
China has peaked Sir: Niall Ferguson makes some good points about the nature of Xi Jinping’s imperial aspirations but misses…
Portrait of the week
Home A new complexion of British politics was revealed by the capture of Hartlepool by Jill Mortimer for the Conservatives…
Nature calls
‘Georgics’ are an ancient form of poetry about agriculture and the land. The term derives from Greek gê ‘land’ +…
Welcome signs
While the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has no formal role in devising the bloc’s immigration policy, his…
Diary
What would happen to the Republicans after Donald Trump? That has been one of the pundits’ favourite themes in the…
Barometer
At Redwall Abbey Does fiction provide any guide as to the ultimate fate of Labour’s Red Wall? — Redwall Abbey…
Barometer
Flat spin Which prime minister spent the most on their Downing Street flat, according to figures reported over the years?…
Letters
Christian approach Sir: Dr Michael Nazir-Ali’s criticism of our report ‘From Lament to Action’ (‘Bad faith’, 1 May) was wide…
Talking point
Gossip appears to be good for the mental health. That should make the females of the ancient world some of…
Diary
By the time you read this you may know if the Tories triumphed in the Hartlepool by-election — or if,…
Portrait of the week
Home ‘I think we have got a good chance of being able to dispense with the one-metre-plus from 21 June,’…
Data, not dates
A slogan can come back to haunt you. For Boris Johnson, the words ‘data not dates’ sounded powerful at a…
Portrait of the week
Home By the beginning of the week, 12,071,810 people had received both doses of coronavirus vaccine, and the proportion of…
Diary
I spent much of the 1980s and 1990s reporting on company chief executives who didn’t understand the distinction between mine…
Letters
Levelling up Sir: In making the case for social mobility, Lee Cain unwittingly endorses the classism he hopes to fight…
