The Week

Leading article

Leading article: Our sovereign debt

If the government were to grant an award to the public servant who has made the greatest effort over the past year to manage expenditure, Her Majesty the Queen would be a strong contender. The royal public finances, published this week, reveal that the cost of running the royal household has fallen over the past

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week | 9 July 2011

Home A private investigator working for the News of the World allegedly hacked into the voicemail of the murdered girl Milly Dowler while she was missing, deleting messages when the box was full to make room for new messages; this might have given the impression that the girl was still alive. David Cameron, the Prime

Diary

Diary – 9 July 2011

I looked at it and was astonished. It was not that he disliked my ideas — he was entitled to disagree — but that he had attacked a book I had not written. He pretended that I believed the West had been right to support Saddam Hussein while he was gassing the Kurds when I

Ancient and modern

Ancient and modern | 9 July 2011

What to do about the old? In the ancient world, the welfare state did not exist, and few people lived to be old in the first place (perhaps only 5 per cent could expect to make 60). They still had strong views on the matter. One of the most touching passages in Homer’s Iliad is spoken by

Barometer

Barometer | 9 July 2011

Victory celebrations Novak Djokovic celebrated winning the men’s singles at Wimbledon by eating grass on the Centre Court. While not doing a lot to boost the image of his native Serbia as a modern country, the act joins a litany of bizarre victory celebrations. — After winning a 100 metres race in 2004, Maurice Greene

Letters

Letters | 9 July 2011

Back at Black Sir: With one exception, Conrad Black’s article (‘I’ll be back’, 2 July) is a succession of inaccuracies and outright lies. Among the most blatant is his assertion that he received a payment of $6 million in compensation for libel from Richard Breeden and the Special Committee which investigated and reported the frauds