On the principle that you should know your enemy, I’ve spent the last few days trying to work out where the critics of Michael Gove’s GCSE reforms are coming from. Why does anyone object to introducing more rigour into the classroom? Just to be clear, the last government presided over a period of relentless dumbing
There are moments when I suddenly realise how old I am, and one was during the closing ceremony of the Paralympics last Sunday. The pride that had gradually swelled within me during this long patriotic summer was extinguished at a stroke by the performance of the rock band Coldplay. Coldplay may be one of the
Ronald Reagan once told his staff that they were always to wake him if there was an emergency ‘even if I am in a Cabinet meeting at the time’. All of us, Mrs Oakley included, have our definition of an emergency and the other night she shook me awake at 4 a.m. to confront one.
Bad news for those of us with only one X-chromosome: men are on their way out. That’s the view of Hanna Rosin, an enterprising young American journalist who has turned an essay she wrote for The Atlantic two years ago into the most talked-about book of the moment — The End of Men: And the
While cocking a snook at the United States to help him win next year’s presidential election, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador has shown callous indifference to the welfare of his diplomats in London whom he has effectively drafted into the service of a very tricky and unpredictable master in the person of Julian Assange. The
Around the middle of last year, I was approached by the writer Tim Lott to see if I’d like to be a judge in the annual literary competition he organises. On the face of it, the prospect wasn’t very appealing. It’s a romantic fiction prize and who wants to read dozens of chick lit novels,
What has happened to Italy, a country that not even Mussolini could discipline? It used to be cheerfully anarchic and self-indulgent: cars parked haphazardly all over pavements, long lunches and long siestas, fat tummies full of pasta. Officialdom, though bloated and intrusive, could also be flexible. I first fell in love with Italy more than
A few weeks ago, I went to a party at Paul and Marigold Johnson’s house and fell into conversation with Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, a journalistic idol of mine. In addition to being one of Britain’s foremost conservative intellectuals, he was my first proper boss on Fleet Street. He employed me to write opinion pieces and
Sometimes it is all about how you look at things, as was made clear to a clean-living accountant who had helped old ladies across the road, given generously to charity and even found something nice to say about George Osborne. When he shuffled off the mortal coil he found himself sharing a heavenly cloud with
I’ve just returned from a middle-class camping holiday. I don’t mean one of those camping weekends that doubles as a literary festival, like Port Eliot in Cornwall. I mean I’ve just spent three nights at a campsite that is middle-class all year round. Blackberry Wood in Sussex is about ten miles from Brighton and while
The difference between the mood before the Olympic Games and the one after their first week was enormous. The earlier mood was one of gloom and foreboding; the subsequent one of festive exuberance and goodwill. During my visits to London from Northamptonshire during the weeks before the Queen’s encounter with James Bond I found nothing
About 15 years ago, I spent a ‘track day’ at Silverstone with my best friend Sean Langan. The climax was an Audi TT race, the result of which has always been a matter of dispute. I crossed the line first, but a race official told us afterwards that, technically, I should have been disqualified for
OK, OK, so taking part is what matters. But it is medals the viewers want out of the Olympics, lots of them, and for once there is the expectation there will be plenty, perhaps nearly 50, from our cyclists, swimmers, sailors, athletes and the rest. Since the Atlanta Games of 1996, when Britain returned, to
It won’t surprise many people to learn that the British Olympian selected to carry Team GB’s flag at the opening ceremony tomorrow went to a private school. Triple gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy attended George Watson’s College, a Scottish independent school established in 1741. Annual fees are a fraction under £10,000. Earlier this month, the
Ofcom, the body that regulates the communications industry, says that for the first time people in Britain prefer texting or sending emails to each other to talking on the telephone. Telephone use fell by an amazing 5 per cent in 2011, while over 150 billion text messages were sent in the same year, more than
I always thought it was something that happened to other men as they got older, but not me. I was different. Owing to my extraordinary machismo and strength of character, I would not experience this ‘life change’ until I was at least 75 — and at that point I would just take a pill to
Cramming too much in is always a mistake. It was just one broken jar of tahini paste, requested by Italian friends along with the pork pie, the Marmite and two bottles of Amontillado as items unobtainable in Sardinia, but boy what damage it had done after my holiday suitcase spent three hours in the care
At the conclusion of the Wimbledon final, after Andrew Murray’s big girl’s blouse routine, I was tempted to tweet something uncharitable about men who cry in public. I don’t consider myself to be a stick-in-the-mud reactionary, but there’s something about men who turn on the waterworks that brings out my inner Sir Bufton Tufton. Whatever
There have been enough monsters after them — Denis Nielsen, Peter Sutcliffe, Harold Shipman, Fred West — but the 1960s Moors Murderers still arouse the greatest revulsion. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley didn’t murder as many people as those other serial killers: their victims were only five. But they were all children, sexually abused, tortured
Roxy Mark II is dead. I hoped I’d never have to write those words, but there’s no doubt about the matter. I don’t mean our replacement hamster has escaped like the first one (current whereabouts unknown). I mean she’s expired. She’s not resting. She’s passed on. She is no more. She has gone to meet