NB the below is a revised and updated (and occasionally annotated) republication of an article first published in 2013, which itself republishes one written in 2001. Needless to say that if I were ...

It is curious what stirs people’s emotions. I would have expected my article on smacking to have attracted the most attention when my column was published yesterday. There were a few remarkably stupid ...

Let us first raise the level of debate: This will take a bit of muscular effort. For the level of some contributions is quite low. For instance, Mr ‘skh.pcola’ writes: ‘Herr Hitchens is an anachronism ...

Last week saw one of the noblest acts of human courage in modern times. Yet it has been given far less attention than it should have been.We often hear it said of soldiers and others that they ‘gave ...

Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the moderator has approved them. They must not exceed 500 words. Web links cannot be accepted, and may mean your whole comment is not ...

Some readers may be interested in this account of Professor Michie, a lifelong Communist now a prominent adviser to the Johnson government: ...

Kevin was standing in for Mike Graham, who is away today. My thanks to Jonathan Mayhew-Price for making this available.

THIS would make a good TV thriller: a few years in the future, with the world in economic turmoil and the whole planet in a tense, uncertain mess, French-speaking Quebec finally breaks away from ...

Some years ago I had the very good luck to fall into the hands of a totally useless doctor. It was hell, and nearly worse than that, but it taught me one of the most important lessons of my life. He ...

On Sunday morning a woman rushed out of a side road in a quiet Oxford suburb, violently knocked me off my bicycle and mangled the machine I was riding. Quite understandable, some of you may think.

@Henry You are pendantic beyond belief. I stand by what I said. Even you are saying that the vaccine reduces NOT eliminates the spread of the virus. And you say that, while the vaccine "protects" ...

In 1975, the United Kingdom government distributed three pamphlets to voters in the weeks before the referendum on our continued membership of what was then the Common Market. I have reproduced them ...