Why MPs can’t switch off this summer
The SNP has given the Conservative and Labour parties a lot to think about
The left pillories Tim Farron for his popular view
This is why we do not see more ordinary people in politics: the elite do not approve of their opinions
Building this lay-by is all I can think about now
I’m out in all weathers with my pick and barrow, and when I come in I just want to go back out and do one more rock
Farewell to the City’s stroppy regulator: a modest sop for the new bank tax
Plus: BT’s bigness problem; interesting times for metal-traders; and Franz Lehár’s take on the euro crisis
Caught on the net
Online services have streamlined potentially shameful acts as never before – but don’t ever believe the promise that no one will find out
Kisses of Virtuous Renunciation
He was checked in under the name Immortality, Mr Immortality — but on the vanity were the little capsules of…
Teenage terrors
I think I can understand the young people seduced by Isis– because once upon a time, it could have been me
Vive Hollande?
If the right stays split, the unpopular Monsieur Flanby could walk straight back into the presidency
Degrees in disaster
From Nehru’s India to Varoufakis’s Greece, the trendy doctrines of our universities have much to answer for
Dying for attention
In the age of social media, ‘breaking the final taboo’ is becoming de rigueur. But death is taboo for good reason
Pop psychology
We need releases for our nervous energy, and resistance-followed-by-surrender sensations do seem to work
Divide and quit
Yasmin Khan’s superlative The Raj at War finally does justice to the crucial contribution of the Indian army to Hitler’s defeat, says William Dalrymple
Sometimes it’s good to worry
Francis O’Gorman’s Worrying: A Literary and Cultural Guide finds not much hope for the human race — but at least worriers, being sensitive to others, apparently make good team mates
Reducing poetry to a science
Daniel Swift takes ‘the Queen of Formalism’ to task over her scientific approach to poetry in her spiky new collected essays, The Ocean, the Bird and the Scholar
The end of secrecy
Two new books on intelligence — Intercept by Gordon Corera and Why Spy? by Brian Stewart and Samantha Newbery — find that had Britain been less hidebound by secrecy it could have led the world in computer science
Last day
None of the teachers who taught us were around that final afternoon at Grammar school — probably frightened of being…
An exquisite flowering of talent
McEwen’s extraordinary botanical works, beautifully illustrated in this volume from Kew, glow with life and individuality that repay the closest scrutiny
Nimble-witted wanderer
Harry Mount scatters alpha anecdotes as he swelters up Mediterranean hillsides (in a slightly silly hat) on the track of his legendary hero, in Harry Mount’s Odyssey
Poison and parsnip wine
Nigel Williams’s editor should have returned R.I.P. with the words ‘do it again’
From Major to minor
In his memoir A Different Kind of Weather, the gifted Tory politician and man of letters William Waldegrave comes across as a noble soul full of misplaced self-reproach
Amanda
When I didn’t recognise the number and saw the text with kisses, but no name — ‘Thinking of you: they’re…
Wild things
Health and safety laws and New Labour targets put paid to the visionary original adventure playgrounds, but they seem to be making a comeback, says Maisie Rowe
Wish list
Compilation albums are a big deal these days – especially if you're negotiating over 50 years' worth of music, says Annie Nightingale