Featured articles

Features

The real Diana was our future Queen

‘Oh God, not more Diana.’ We’ve all heard it this summer and Di-fatigue is unlikely to be reversed by the official programme of remembrance. The Wembley concert was truly moving in parts, especially the video inserts which recalled Diana at her spontaneous, compassionate best. I’ll admit they reduced me to tears, and not just because

The curious case of the spy who fell to his death

When a man falls to his death from a balcony, some cynics wonder: was he pushed? When that man happens to be the most infamous spy in the history of the modern Middle East, it’s the first question on everyone’s lips. On 27 June the body of Ashraf Marwan was found on the pavement below

The last Tommy says: ‘It was a waste of time’

Harry Patch, 109, recalls his career in Kitchener’s army Two years ago, when he was a mere spring chicken of 106, the last surviving Tommy, Harry Patch, was invited to inspect the Lewis guns at the museum of his old regiment, the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, in Bodmin, Cornwall. To help jog his memory,

How will the BBC save £2 billion? Axe the journalists, of course

A short while after becoming director-general of the BBC, Greg Dyke gathered a whole bunch of staff together at some warehouse near the City Airport to thrash things out and to deliver unto them his vision for the corporation. There was an air of trepidation among those gathered; Greg had very recently flexed his muscles

Can working men’s clubs survive the smoking ban?

Reactions to the smoking ban at a working men’s club I pressed the buzzer on the wall of the darkened doorway of the Custom House Working Men’s Club in east London. It wasn’t clear whether the shabby building was open for business or not. I pressed again and waited. In the early 1970s there were

Bush’s exit strategy: cut and run – but not too far

More than four years after the American-led invasion of Iraq, there are signs that George W. Bush is preparing to call it quits. When the Americans disbanded the Iraqi army in 2003 and left the borders wide open they sowed the seeds of disaster. Neither the ‘coalition of the willing’ nor even the recent ‘surge’ could put Humpty together again.