Following last month’s report on Simon Callow playing Charles Dickens in a forthcoming episode of Doctor Who, I feel duty bound to start a r...

Cricket, like baseball or boxing, is a sport that particularly lends itself to great writing, and has a terrific literary canon all of its o...

As a generally pro-America Briton, it does trouble me that thirty-eight of the US’s fifty states allow the death penalty in some form. Al...

BBC2 last night continued its excellent series ‘What if…’ with a debate on the pros and cons of legalising hard drugs in Britain. I’ve al...

The sudden realisation of one’s own mortality usually occurs to people in their thirties or forties, so it’s called a ‘mid-life crisis’. It ...

A guide to English hooligan culture, and how Rupert Murdoch killed it One of the less edifying trends currently surfacing in British pop ...

Continuing the movie theme, we have started 2005 with a flurry of cinema-going, and have already witnessed three fine films: The Aviator ...

Three great films from last year: Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World I can’t seem to get tired of watching this one. It’s ...

Theodore Dalrymple, a notoriously pessimistic commentator on Britain's social ills, has his say on British drinking culture, and the Gov...

The Guardian today reports on/sneers at (delete as appropriate) the visit to Phuket by Jeb Bush (Dubya’s younger brother), and Colin Powell,...

pickwick pic

Ben has created a fundraising appeal for the MS Trust. It's incredibly easy to use and a very good cause. Just visit this site: http://w...

If you hear an astrophysicist or some other bearded type suggest that there are multiple universes, you may quite reasonably wonder what po...

brit pic

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are thi...

Stockholm syndrome is the phenomenon where hostages or prisoners form a powerful relationship with their captors. This can sometimes become ...