The Murdochs are back in town, like a recurring outbreak of a particularly unpleasant virus. Rupert may be, as his apologists like to claim, a…

Why is it that the Chancellor’s annual budget speech always leaves everyone – and I mean everyone – unhappy?  There isn’t, I warrant, a solitary…

I feel much better now. Dame Joan Bakewell, the former broadcaster and writer, a woman of formidable intelligence and charm, says life is happiest when…

The growing habit in business circles of addressing everyone, including customers, by their first names is a habit that has been driving my wife to…

Here’s a statement calculated to invite death threats: people living in towns should no longer be allowed to own dogs. I happen to like dogs. …

News that a friend’s wife has died has left me in a reflective mood on this Passover/Easter weekend. She was in her late-sixties, her husband…

We can be beguiled by three forms of lies, Mark Twain used to say, perhaps borrowing from Benjamin Disraeli: “There are lies, damned lies, and…

Can censorship of speech, or the written word, ever be justified? I surprise myself by reluctantly answering the question in the affirmative.  The reason is…

Even tyrants can be hen-pecked. Mrs. Asma al-Assad, the British-born wife of Syria’s dictator, asserts that she’s the one who wears the trousers in the…

Well, I suppose we had to do something drastic, especially in this year of the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, with the eyes…