If you’re not annoying Lindsay, are you even a Cabinet Minister?

We credit pluck for what we really owe to imperial and industrial might

Nostalgia has long been the key to pop’s survival

His concerto is a rag-and-bone man’s barrow trundling down a Haussmann boulevard

Professor Jeremy Black rounds up the best autumnal reads that are successful in grounding a sense of place

Did peace prevail in the World Wars thanks to providential deliverance, or just a number of very fortunate occurrences?

The Genetic Lottery is not the only book published this summer to tackle controversial topics in biology

Tirthankar Roy dismisses both nationalist tropes about evil colonialists and imperial assumptions of benevolent liberal intervention

Little of the Hungarian aristocrats’ world remains, except a few crumbling buildings — and Count Bánffy’s stories

The apostate saint

Bercow remains a grim warning about what a politician can still do in the chair, if he puts his mind to it

Are social workers targeting mothers who serve frozen meals?

Laurence Sterne’s 250-year-old masterpiece is a radical, riotous celebration of liberty loathed by both Nazis and communists

A border tax on carbon emissions would encourage the markets to solve our green problems

Attempts to “decolonise” school history ignore academic rigour in favour of mere tokenism

Acronyms are one of the means by which bureaucracies hide or obfuscate what they do

Lucien veers between lamenting modern theatre’s disdain for “truly serious work” and suspecting that it all could have gone a great deal worse

Time for self-styled “design guru” Stephen Bayley to move on from his erstwhile mentor, monstrous Sir Tel

Frankie Dettori’s unmatched skill, underestimated bravery and unprecedented love for the horses

Kathleen Stock’s new book is exactly the kind of forensic, generous intervention the ongoing trans debate sorely needs

How the facts of Hannah Arendt’s life read like fiction

If you want your views of the wrongness of Brexit confirmed, this dull book will do so

Rob Burrow approaches MND like he did Rugby League: with bravery and without fear

With fates in this unforgiving industry long decided, one either had to witness the poison emanating from the professionally unfortunate, or the brazen exhibitionism of those who “succeed”

A new book revisits the painter’s death and returns the verdict that it was suicide after all

Why on earth would we want to see the same tawdry old stories endlessly re-enacted?

Michael Henderson delves into two different radio programmes with identity at the centre

Thomas Woodham-Smith on the trade’s true mavericks

Shoots must be places of buzzing biodiversity

Lisa Hilton says a prime spot near the kitchen is no compensation for a bewilderingly bad evening

The plants are listening, says Hephzibah Anderson