No French Please
Sacre bleu! Why bother learning any French when in France you’ll just be humiliated? Let’s study Mandarin, or Arabic, or Spanish in schools instead.
Airtime To Fill
Twenty-four-hour news coverage should have ushered in a new age of investigative, in-depth journalism. Instead, it’s banal, repetitive and slack
Hands Off Judges
The 'modernising' of the judiciary by politicians, and their insistence judges be cosy with senior civil servants, undermines a centuries-old institution
Poetic Injustice
The Arts Council is no longer subsidising poetry publishers but giving direct grants to poets instead. The result: the death of the enriching working
A World of Flowers
A poem composed in the aftermath of the death of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich
A Toast To Civilisation
We asked our readers to come up with a cocktail recipe that best reflects Western civilisation. The winning drink is both fortifying and delicious
Publisher Be Damned
The feud at Germany’s most respected publishing house reads like a passage from Vanity Fair written by Thomas Mann
Syria Isn’t Bosnia: Don’t Arm the Rebels
Assisting the Free Syria Army to overthrow Assad by force will only lead to further religious persecution, torture and death