Books
BoJo’s Life of Johnson
Exclusive extracts of perhaps the best autobiography by a former Conservative prime minister called Boris
England’s forgotten football dystopia
The beautiful game is not fit to be a national religion
The kindest of ghosts
A new history of childhood reading is a treasure
Midlands marvels and mysteries
A fitting if flawed tribute to one of England’s more undersung counties
Run from “Rabbits”
Hugo Rifkind’s new novel is like a warm bath turning cold
Of mice and men and Magdalen
C. S. Lewis’s Oxford by Simon Horobin
A spy’s afterlife
John le Carré’s work and life still haunt British culture
A bad man writes a worse book
Alastair Campbell’s new book is beneath the level of the bargain bin
Against literary celebriphilia
We need interesting authors, not “big names”
Murders for June
Murders haunt the longest days as well as the shortest
Aggers declares — the end of an era
It has been an assured innings, and a long one
Religion without mercy
Progressivism has all the zeal of Christianity, but none of its emphasis on forgiveness
We need more have-yachts
The tragedy of the Bayesian highlights a wider issue about our lack of ambition
Violence is a feature of porn, not a bug
Aggression towards women permeates the most popular pornography
Bar none
The fraud behind the Bar Standards Board’s “equality and diversity” drive
Labour’s economic policies are incoherent
Labour risks collapsing under the weight of its own inner economic contradictions
Poor conduct
Shostakovich: Symphonies 4-6 (Decca)
Now’s your time, House of Lords
The upper house must prove its worth by opposing the shabby Chagos Islands deal
The idea of the countryside Pt. 2
English rural life in theory and practice Pt. 2
The strange death of the Office for Place
The demise of the Office for Place is a missed opportunity for housing
Is Cheltenham beyond parody?
A books bash these days has to offer Geri and Geoff Hurst and that bloke out of Radiohead
