The bizarre sound of Tories crying "Trot"
Conservative ministers' habit of denouncing critics as lunatic ideologues says more about their own If anything encapsulates just how out of touch those at the top of the Conservative Party are it is...
View ArticleReligion marginalised? Nonsense
Far from being repressed, expressions of faith and evidence of religious practice and identity are eAnyone who believes that religion has been marginalised in Britain should consider the extraordinary...
View ArticleThe value of the NHS and the BBC is immeasurable
Without these organisations, Britain would be more divided, violent and parochial.It has never been easy to justify making people pay for something they don't use. That is often how disgruntled Britons...
View ArticleThe value of the NHS and the BBC is immeasurable
Attempts to denigrate these public institutions must be resistedIt has never been easy to justify making people pay for something they don't use. That is often how disgruntled Britons now see the NHS...
View ArticleRescuing writers from the "mid-list"
Fiction Uncovered gives eight novelists the recognition they deserve.For reasons not entirely clear to me the act of reading novels had been chiselled down to two mutually exclusive disciplines. The...
View ArticleWhy George Osborne now looks irretrievably damaged
The Chancellor is a politician unable to conceal his lack of control.Whether it is attacking Britain’s “lazy” workers, blaming the double-dip recession on the rain or taking credit for Olympic gold...
View ArticleIn praise of the clavinet
It's 40 years since Stevie Wonder showed off the otherwordly range of this keyboard.If you listen very closely to "Sweet Little Girl" from Stevie Wonder’s Music of My Mind album you can hear him...
View ArticleThe pictorial Shakespeare of our time
In praise of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.Sixty years ago, deep in the forests of the Izu peninsula about 75 miles from Tokyo, a film crew toiled on a purpose-built, full-scale replica of a...
View ArticleCut-price popster or noble sentamentalist? A beginner's guide to Burt Bacharach
Burt Bacharach’s songs have an inconvenient habit of catching even the most committed cynic unawares and leaving them – about three minutes later – blubbing like the mother of the bride. How does he do...
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