Unlike so many authors and “experts” (dread word!) who specialise in writing about the British upper classes, Sarah and I are both very much the “real thing”. Was this not a picture of contemporary government by cabinet or quango? And wasn’t this supposedly “free” market economy being used as a way of guaranteeing and protecting [...]

From all tests, 12 positives resulted – eight for cannabis, two for cold cures and two for amphetamines.More tests will always uncover more wrongdoing, but in the context of the number of footballers who could, in theory, be tested, the amount of testing remains so small that as one senior FA man said last week, [...]

He wanted to dispense with airlifts carrying both food and blankets – the arrival of blankets merely put local blanket-makers out of work. In Calcutta, his father recalls, he argued with Mother Teresa, telling her bluntly that her plan to build concrete housing was wrong for Calcutta’s muddy soil. According to an article in the [...]

Peter Hall had him play Fortinbras, to David Warner’s Hamlet, as a blond Fascist beast. His Laertes, with Nicol Williamson, was directed by Tony Richardson to have an incestuous passion for Marianne Faithfull’s Ophelia. (“Just grab his cock, Marianne.”) Whether for that reason or another, his grief at her grave was unusually convincing.After all the [...]

Similar to a children’s puzzle, it involves fitting three coloured blocks on to pegs of different heights (the first a single block high, the second two blocks, the next three). The intention was to see if the results of the first experiment could be replicated by distracting the subjects – thus occupying more of their [...]

Ink based on iron-gall, however, has to be cooked: “Leave 125g of finely powdered gall to soak for three days in two litres of rain water. More than five degrees of frost will set it back and on chalk it is less happy than its hardier relation, the Portu-gal laurel. In the blackboard analogy, this [...]

Labour believes the promise to act on late payment will have potent appeal to businessmen in the run-up to the general election. I certainly went through that experience and certainly in those circumstances the creditors waited for their money But they all got paid. That’s what the creditors care about above all else,” he said.Asked [...]

They promptly charged him pounds 10, but like most fare dodgers, he did not have the money and therefore they merely took down his name and address leaving Stagecoach with its first debt collection problem.There seemed to be no one with a good word to say about privatisation among the fare-paying passengers. And one of [...]

would not commit us to developing a repository at Sellafield. If underground research shows that the site would not be suitable, Nirex would walk away.” The company has already spent pounds 400m at Sellafield.The inquiry sat for 66 days, and heard 73 witnesses, 18 of them appearing for Nirex. The earliest waste could start going [...]

“If you know Arwel, nothing is predictable about him, so every time he gets the ball everyone goes ‘aah’,” Jonathan Humphreys, the Wales captain, said.Humphreys’s “aah” was more of a screech than a purr of satisfaction, the early try with which Wales opened up the game being a case in point. Which was an interesting [...]