Home The High Speed 2 rail link between London and Birmingham is to go ahead, Justine Greening, the Secretary of State for Transport, announced. The stretch to Birmingham would be completed by 2026, but a connection to Heathrow not until 2033, when the extensions to Manchester and Leeds would be finished. The cost of the
To Moscow! To Moscow! Recently I was in Russia as a guest of the British Council. My friend Damian Barr hosts a regular literary salon in London, and the idea was to put one on here, with the poet and essayist Linor Goralik, the novelist Alexander Ilichevsky, the publisher Dan Franklin and me. Extraliterary considerations:
Sir Paul Ruddock has revealed that he received his knighthood for none but philanthropic reasons. Every ancient would have cheered him to the roof and wondered why bankers like Sir Paul do not front up more about their beneficence. Those who go round a classical site or museum will find themselves regularly bumping into inscriptions
War horses Steven Spielberg’s film War Horse was released this week. How many horses were killed in British Army service during the first world war? — According to the Official History of the War Veterinary Services, it was 484,143. — Michael Morpurgo, on the other hand, says he asked the Imperial War Museum before writing
When Ed Miliband stands up in the House of Commons, he might be surprised to hear the loudest cheers coming from the wrong side of the chamber. He is becoming an unlikely Tory champion, the man who’ll do more than anyone else to ensure that David Cameron wins an outright majority at the next general
Pick your battle Sir: In your leading article ‘Save the Union’ (7 January), you allude to Alex Salmond’s plan to hold a referendum on Scottish independence shortly after the 700th anniversary of the battle on Bannockburn. I suggest a referendum on the 500th anniversary of the battle of Flodden Field (September 2013) when we English
