Michael Foot, who died on Wednesday, aged 96, was a wonderful man. A major politician and an accomplished writer, he stood firmly in the great British tradition of literary radicals. There was something defiantly unmodern and unspun about him, but this was the point of Mr Foot: he was a leader who saw politics as
There is something distinctly Orwellian about Ed Balls’s latest wheeze. There is something distinctly Orwellian about Ed Balls’s latest wheeze. As of this week, parents requesting that their child be sent to a particular school are being informed by text message if their application has been successful. It is amazing how technology gives governments so
The Conservatives made their election slogan ‘Vote for change’, and Mr David Cameron made their flesh creep in a speech at a conference at Brighton concluding: ‘I want you to think of the incredible dark depression of another five years of Gordon Brown.’ The Conservatives made their election slogan ‘Vote for change’, and Mr David
Monday This is typical! I go away for some winter sun in the Canaries with Mummy and come back to find Labour on course to form the next government! One week I was out of the office — one week! — and it’s all gone pear-shaped, or tits up, as Jed is saying. It’s obviously
The story behind Kidnapped Sir: Not withstanding my gratitude for Andro Linklater’s kind words in his recent review of my book Birthright: The True Story That Inspired ‘Kidnapped’ (Books, 27 February), I must correct his description of the subtitle as ‘simply wrong’. It is inconceivable that Stevenson, a voracious reader of legal history, was unfamiliar
