Why I now believe in positive discrimination
It need not rule out selection by merit – but to assess ‘merit’, potential as well as performance should be considered
The London mayoral election will be a battle between whatsisface and whatsisname
Hardly anyone voted when it was Boris vs Ken – they’ll care even less about Zac vs Sadiq. And it doesn’t matter anyway
I told you so: the UK electricity gap looms wider than ever
Plus: Some good economic news; a film-worthy banking drama; and the case for using your connections
Fighting over the crumbs
They are too divided and their campaigns too shambolic to seize this opportunity
Breaking
Was everybody scared? Mum was, certainly. Slip-clinging hold, respectability. World-lost, he didn’t care, Or didn’t cotton on. Inexplicably, He…
The bad book
The publishers have asked for all review copies of That Was the Church That Was to be returned
Hollande’s own emergency
The French president’s response to the November terror attacks has left him increasingly isolated and unpopular
Inside the new Navy
The helmsman’s a woman, the wardrooms are unisex... but the stokers are disappearing in droves
A lesson in self-censorship
I thought it was part of our job to promote tolerance and challenge orthodoxy. I was wrong
Death on the NHS
Ten years ago the National Health Service eased my father’s last days. My mother, this year, was not nearly so lucky
Fear of the baby-snatchers
The care system’s eagerness to separate babies from parents is taking a large but secret toll
South Africa
Jacob Zuma's economic mismanagement has a benefit for tourists: it’s as if a whole country has become half-price
Tawdry tales of Tinseltown
Jean Stein’s collection of Tinseltown tittle-tattle is moderately interesting, unpleasantly salacious and largely unsourced
‘Crazy mixed-up Yid’
Litvinoff apparently knew everyone in Sixties London, including Lucian Freud, Mick Jagger to Ronnie Kray (who slashed his face)
Losing a Crown in the National Portrait Gallery
The cafe was full of connoisseurs of the scones. As he bit into his flapjack a sinister uncoupling took place…
Roaming in the gloaming
Peter Davidson’s meditation on the role of twilight in European culture is too nebulous — or protean — to be very illuminating
Odi et amo
Daisy Dunn’s own passion for the earthy yet urbane Catullus is evident in her skilful recreation of his life and times
Down and out in Park Lane and Plaistow
Following in the steps of Orwell, Judah reports on the desperate circumstances of the city’s (mainly immigrant) down-and-outs
Unreliable Narrator
If a clock can be a household’s totem then we remain hopeful ours will show us an accurate blue moon…
Riddles in the sand
According to the distinguished Egyptologist Susan Brind Morrow, the famous pyramid texts are more poetic — if simpler — than previously thought
Muskets v. the Highland charge
Trevor Royle gives an even-handed account of this last desperate throw of the dice for Bonnie Prince Charlie
From surgeon’s scrubs to patient’s gown
When Breath Becomes Air is the neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi’s powerful — and posthumous — account of finding himself on the wrong end of the scalpel
Easy Street
Roller skating down the main road in the cycle lane, her easy, smooth and flowing scissor stride on booted castors,…
We are not all in this together
Owen Hatherley’s polemic on public expenditure cuts is less ranty — and more reflective — than one might expect
The making of a legend
Will Andrew Hankinson’s study of Raoul Moat’s spree-killing obsession become a script for further murder?
