There's nothing posh about being a Tory, whatever Oxbridge Conservative...
How sound are you? More importantly, are you sound enough? The term "sound" will no doubt be familiar to many readers of Telegraph Blogs, but just in case, it means "Right-wing". The sounder you are,...
View ArticleTop Gun conjures up a time when action films were harmless and America was...
Tony Scott’s death marks the passing of an entire genre of films. Eighties and Nineties action blockbusters now look like antiques. I spent much of my adolescence watching Top Gun and terms like...
View ArticleJohn Gray reminds us that there is more to literature than holiday reading
This summer John Gray delivered A Point of View on Radio 4. He spent most of his time talking about books. Not dense works of political philosophy, but Graham Greene’s screenplay for The Third Man and...
View ArticlePrince Harry shouldn't worry – every young person has an embarrassing photo...
First it was the Nazi costume, caught on camera. Then it was the casual racism, recorded on video. Now it's strip-billiards, captured on a cameraphone. Prince Harry doesn't have much luck when it comes...
View ArticleIan McEwan is right: there is nothing shameful about liking short novels
Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan's new book, features an author called Tom Haley, who is short-listed for the fictional Austen Prize with a novella. Another character notes how catty the coverage is, as though...
View ArticleIt’s glorious to see Parade’s End brought back to life by the BBC, but many...
It’s always a shock to read lists naming the past winners of literary prizes, and realise how few are recognisable today. Old paperbacks are just as surprising. Whenever I come across a dusty penguin...
View ArticleOxbridge undergraduates are no more decadent than any other students – in...
The disciplinary records from a number of Oxford and Cambridge colleges have been released. They make for pretty shocking reading. Naked parades, drunken brawling and late-night carousing. It’s the...
View ArticleIt's hard to be disappointed by the news that people would rather watch...
Retailers hoped that the Olympics would boost high-street sales. Busloads of tourists visiting London, wandering around Oxford Street and taking advantage of the extended Sunday trading hours. But this...
View ArticleMichael Gove is right to ditch the discredited GCSE brand
I was disappointed to hear that the replacement for the GCSE exam will not be called a Gove-level. While not as catchy a phrase as Boris bikes, the Government’s most successful minister deserves to...
View ArticleWhat's the point of reading fiction when non-fiction books have so many juicy...
The longlist for the Samuel Johnson Prize has been announced, and it's got some cracking reads. Take Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, which exposes the irrational ways we make our everyday...
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