Killing with kindness
The MoD’s drive for a net zero military is an ideological folly that risks national security
Our AI overlords will end bigotry
Bring on the machines
Why they hated Ann Widdecombe
Fair-minded people could agree or disagree with her opinions. Left-wing bigots hated her for not abandoning them
Is football hooliganism fashionable?
As violence returns to Edgware Road, official insistence that two-tier policing is a myth looks increasingly difficult to sustain
Politicians can’t handle free speech
The more criticism ministers receive online, the more determined they become to regulate what everyone else can say
Labour’s Gagging Acts
Labour is taking inspiration from Pitt the Younger when it comes to curbing speech
The ankle tag and the ballot box
The courts convicted Marine Le Pen, but left her political fate to French voters
These green and printed lands
How William Caxton developed Englishness, and how his Englishness is breaking down
Lessons on being a rule-taker
The EU reset undermines Brexit and Britain
The value of social value
Social value requirements have made public procurement more expensive, more bureaucratic and harder for smaller firms to compete
The (in)justice of the Equality Act
Far from guaranteeing equal treatment, the Equality Act has transformed Britain’s understanding of equality from individual rights to group identity
RIP New Labour?
Keir Starmer’s failure should mark a decisive break with a failed consensus
Night of the big bins
How Count Binface changed the face of Britain forever
Bring back literary vendettas
Grub Street thrived when
there was an “establishment”,
movements and feuds
Sex, success and failure
Sarah Ditum talks with songwriter Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy
A police school for scandal
Is it any wonder there’s a two-tier policing controversy when officer training is focused on political correctness?
David Lean
The cinematic genius admired by today’s directors
Ancient bones of contention
The burgeoning and irregulated market for dinosaur skeletons
Breaking the mould
The closure of the Denby pottery factor is an example of short-term political thinking
Wit as well as social conscience
Avril Quartet: Claires Obscures (Etcetera)
Lord’s and ladies
The first women’s Test is a welcome step forward
The wonders of Whistler
A new exhibition offers calm stillness — mostly
Equality of opportunity, and other bedtime stories
Britain cannot make progress if equality is its highest goal
The intractable problems pulling modern Britain apart
When does upholding free speech become an act of self-sabotage?
A bloodless account of blood-soaked times
Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece by Adrian Goldsworthy
Rock star variations
Bows and Arrows: The Autobiography by Julian Lloyd Webber
Rendering the word of God in English
500 years ago, William Tyndale published his groundbreaking New Testament translation
When art took on fascism (and lost)
Abstract activist concerns have overshadowed aesthetic production
Not mad for it
I Puritani, Royal Opera, Covent Garden
Sweeter the second time around
There’s a real weight to some lyrics once you’re nearer the end than the beginning
Let there be lightness
Black Comedy is best viewed as a breathtakingly accomplished technical exercise
Lebanon’s finest
Henry Jeffreys savours some reds and whites from the Bekaa valley
The summer chill
Cool soups for hot days
The praises of a neglected vegetable
Summer calls for cold cucumbers
Rewatching a TV show from a lost world
In River Cottage, a chef escaped to Dorset from London in search of the good life