Search

Harold Wilson: The Winner Nick Thomas-Symonds Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 544pp, 25 [pounds sterling] This biography of Harold Wilson, by a senior member of Keir Starmer's shadow cabinet, sometimes comes close [...]

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2022 Edited by Lawrence Booth John Wisden & Co, 1,536pp, 57 [pounds sterling] Turn to page 683 of this year's Wisden and you will see a list [...]

Charles III is a disappointment. Many thought he would be unable to restrain himself from meddling in politics and expressing his contentious opinions on architecture, education and medicine. But he [...]

Boris Johnson returns with typically macho language: comparing coronavirus to 'an unexpected and invisible mugger', he says 'this is the moment when we have begun together to wrestle it to [...]

It's the 'woke' liberal elite that threatens free speech, we are perpetually told. Those who hold traditional, patriotic views are allegedly bullied into silence. But try expressing republican opinions in [...]

On the Cusp: Days of '62 David Kynaston Bloomsbury, 256pp. 18.99 [pounds sterling] On 11 September 1962, the first-class English cricket season came to an end, as was then customary, [...]

No, he legitimised Thatcherism As prime minister, Blair undermined his own party. Even Tony Blair's most steadfast supporters now acknowledge that he was guilty of errors in taking Britain to [...]

In October 2014, the Guardian journalist Seumas Milne arrived in the Russian city of Sochi on the Black Sea coast, near the Georgian border. He 1 was there to attend [...]

In the issue of 12-17 April, the New Statesman published in the magazine's Observations section a 900-word article by George Eaton, joint deputy editor, on the Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, [...]

Off-screen, the BBC's most deadly political interviewer pushes his pro-Brexit line unchallenged. He has had a remarkable media career, yet around him there lingers an air of disappointed expectation. What [...]

Sometimes a cartoon says it all. In last week's NS (page 19), Grizelda showed two small children in floods of tears, wailing, 'We don't want to live in historic times!' [...]

A hopelessly divided government incapable of governing. A parliament acting, as some see it, unconstitutionally. A very left-wing opposition leader close to winning office. Businesses preparing for economic catastrophe. Hundreds [...]

The first edition of Erskine May, the parliamentary rule book, provides, in fine Victorian prose, an apt commentary on the current parliamentary session. 'If the same question could be proposed [...]

The rise in knife crime has led to demands from police officers, supported by some Tory MPs, for a revival of stop-and-search. 'Stop-and-search is at an all-time low and knife [...]

The Conservatives had their big split over the Corn Laws in the 1840s. Nothing like it has happened since. In most parliaments since 1918, Labour has lost many more MPs [...]

The word of the moment, appearing with growing frequency on social media and in newspapers, is 'kakistocracy', which means government by the incompetent (kakistos was the Greek word for worst). [...]

Public Schools and the Second World War: The Generation Lost David Walsh and Anthony Seldon Pen & Sword, 328pp, 23 [pounds sterling] The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain's Transition to [...]

Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell John Preston Viking, 353pp, 18.99 [pounds sterling] Newspaper history is littered with examples of politically extreme, power-crazed, egotistic, crooked and straightforwardly insane proprietors. Lord [...]

When Bruce Page, who has died aged 85, became the New Statesman editor in 1978, his first act was to tear up the style book. The magazine, in his view, [...]

Though I admire Diane Abbott--and put her as my first choice in the 2010 Labour leadership election--I am bound to admit that her constantly wagging forefinger, and habit of speaking [...]

In northern Europe, before significant quantities of food were imported, April, May and June were known as 'the hungry months'. Stockpiles from the previous year had run out and few [...]

When a new plan or new money is announced for the NHS, Tory governments accompany it with demands that the service cut waste. 'The public ... want to know that [...]

As the British leave Afghanistan, the verdicts are clear. The evacuation 'resembled ... the retreat of an army defeated' and the war brought 'not one benefit, either political or military'. [...]

Every weekday evening at around 9pm, in the Daily Mail's headquarters in Kensington, west London, the slightly stooping, six-foot three-inch figure of Paul Dacre emerges into the main open-plan office [...]

The declaration sounded warm and unequivocal. 'Congratulations - you have my full support!' said Charlie Whelan, Gordon Brown's spin doctor, clasping my arm. It was the spring of 1998, a [...]

Climate scientists got it wrong. If we kept average global temperatures at 1.5[degrees]C above pre-industrial levels, they assured us, we would be 'safe' from catastrophic results. Efforts to halt global [...]

Boris Johnson's government has opened a new front in its culture wars. Many Tories argue that 'woke' university lecturers brainwash schoolteachers during initial training. When he was education secretary under [...]

Lytton, the Canadian village that recorded a temperature of 49.6 [degrees] C this month before wildfire burned it to the ground, is on roughly the same latitude (50.2 degrees north) [...]

Stop Funding Hate campaigners, who want advertisers to shun newspapers that propagate 'fear and division', have added the new TV channel GB News to their targets. Around a dozen companies [...]

Instead of fretting over whether their holiday destinations are categorised green, amber or red, can't Britons stay at home? They recently voted to leave the EU so that they can [...]

Although it has been widely noted that Lord Liverpool was the last prime minister before Boris Johnson to marry while in office, the more apposite precedent is Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd [...]

In its self-congratulatory 200th birthday celebrations, the Guardian publishes a timeline of its history. The launch of its daily features section G2 (1992) is noted. So are the acquisition of [...]

These are heady days for the Guardian and its editor, Alan Rusbridger. The News of the World, once the highest-circulation Sunday newspaper in the English-speaking world, is dead. Its proprietor, [...]

Throughout the coalition government's first year, its plans for the NHS have attracted more controversy and opposition than any other policy. But Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, is not the [...]

Once more, Rupert Murdoch is seen in the canteen at Wapping, east London, headquarters of his British newspapers, and heard at editorial conferences offering his views on the issues of [...]

One calm, blue April morning nearly 28 years ago, I switched on my television to watch something I never expected to see in my lifetime: the British fleet putting out [...]

The Old Boys: the Decline and Rise of the Public School David Turner Yale University Press, 352pp, 25 £ In the preface to this book, David Turner observes that if [...]

Shirley Williams, who has died aged 90, really was as nice as her popular image. I was a young reporter in the early 1970s when the Observer sent me to [...]

Should everybody resign? In the social media age, no public figure can escape calls for their instant departure if they are even vaguely responsible for an error, great or small. [...]

In their interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle spoke well of the Queen. 'I really loved being in her company,' Meghan said. 'The Queen has always been [...]

In the British Journalism Review, Roy Greenslade, a former Daily Mirror editor and Sunday Times editorial executive, reveals that he was and is an IRA supporter, with no reservations about [...]

A right-wing Australian government proposes a law to make Google and Facebook pay for content they now rip off from newspapers. A free press would be saved and democracy would [...]

Along with the Valentine's Day disclosure that Meghan Markle is expecting a second child, a picture of her, lying under a tree with her husband, the Duke of Sussex, while [...]

Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists, being old-fashioned British patriots, didn't want to stay in the EU or even settle for a soft Brexit. They didn't want a hard border with the [...]

There's a story, probably apocryphal, that in 1929 a shoeshine boy offered Joseph Kennedy, the father of John F Kennedy, tips about shares to buy. Kennedy decided that the 1920s [...]

We now know that Alistair Darling was not joking when he said last summer that we faced the worst economic crisis in 60 years. The fall in GDP is now [...]

In my mind's eye, I can see it now. Down our road, in the middle of a prolonged period of dry weather, came a small but steady stream of water. [...]