For what should we give thanks this Christmas? The faith that sustains millions through life’s challenges and inspires countless acts of compassion every day? The hope that our world may be redeemed by love? The charity that makes us think of the voiceless and the vulnerable who need our love and protection? Faith, hope and
January After an ITV drama, the government suddenly proposed to do something about the unjust prosecution of sub-postmasters. Junior doctors went on strike. There was a surge in scabies. The King went to hospital and was later found to have cancer. The Princess of Wales was in hospital with what turned out to be cancer.
‘Ring out the old, ring in the new…’ This was the year I discovered that one of my ancestors had been a housemaid deflowered, impregnated and turfed out on to the street by her self-evidently villainous employer – but also that another had been land agent to Lord Tennyson. The perfect incentive for me, then,
Ancient Greek thinkers tried to explain every natural phenomenon in human terms, without reference to magic or gods. That was a major intellectual revolution. Greek doctors’ contribution was to invent what has been called ‘rational’ medicine, embedding a principle of the highest importance, however hopeless its premise: which was that the health of the human
Root cause As in every year since 1947, a spruce tree given by the people of Oslo adorns Trafalgar Square. Yet the tradition actually began in 1942 in the middle of the second world war when a Norwegian commando and resistance fighter, Mons Urangsvag, conducted a raid on the island of Hisoy, off Bergen. He
Betting men Sir: The bet between Martin Rees and me that Matt Ridley recounts pits two kinds of scruples of disinterested rationality against each other (‘Wuhan wager’, 7 December). One is the scientific ethos that calls for factoring in all relevant information in updating one’s degree of credence in a hypothesis. The other is the
