What do you get if you cross a philosophical look at jokes with a liberal thinker in favour of toleration? Answer: Emrys Westacott! Laugh? I almost did. That is until I got to the bit about posh...
Jonathan Fenby values a life of the man who began the People's Republic's economic metamorphosis
Balanced views of Mary I are rare. She is more often than not cast as the "Bloody Mary" of Protestant legend: reactionary, obsessive, persecuting - and, while we're on the subject, short and ugly as...
Richard Fortey's new book, a delight like all its predecessors, considers what are commonly termed "living fossils", in other words, plants and animals that have shown very little change, often for...
Rupert Gethin admires a philosopher's search to assimilate a Buddhist understanding of the world
Our fathers quickly become synonymous with secrets. When we are very small, they go off to a mysterious place called "work" and often return when we are asleep. My father could not be spoken to until...
Part of Jan-Werner Müller's interest in ideas concerns the question of where they come from. For instance, in referring to Francis Fukuyama's concept of the "end of history", he notes that "not for...
LondonSigismund's Watch: A Tiny CatastropheAlthough Barbara Loftus' mother Hildegard fled to England from Nazi Germany in 1939, it was not until 1995 that she began to talk about her experiences and...
Notes and LettersLondonHow and what does music manage to communicate - and how far can the process be described in words? Does contemporary physics confirm ancient ideas about "the music of the...
In a "shock announcement", our Deputy Director of Logo Development, Roger Placement, has confirmed that Poppleton will abandon its current logo.At a hastily convened press conference in the atrium of...
The US is heavyweight champ, but the UK punches far above its weight in the world. So why isn't the government in its corner?
Separating research wheat from chaff is a science in itself, editor of leading journal tells Paul Jump
North American administrators call high rates of plagiarism 'tip of the iceberg'. Jon Marcus reports
• A lecturer convicted of assaulting a police officer has been allowed to keep his job at the University of Manchester. Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet, lecturer in terrorism and political violence,...
"Exit stage left pursued by HR": is this an appropriate final direction for this retiring professor? In order to depart from the University of Western Australia, I had to download, fill in and...