Rear-view review: Charlie

Nigel Williams’s 1984 thriller involving trade unions, nationalised car manufacturers, far left politics – it’s a classic of its era, concludes DAN ATKINSON. Continue reading →

2020 Politician of the Year (dead)

Boris Johnson has chosen the wrong lodestar. He should look to an earlier wartime premier. Continue reading →

2020 Politician of the Year (decomposing)

The return of our award for the politician throwing it all away. Continue reading →

Imperial fiction: Goodbye, Mr Chips

The best of all school stories? ALWYN TURNER thinks it might be. Continue reading →

Novelist MPs #2: Woodrow Wyatt

Was Wyatt’s fiction as colourful as his diaries? wonders PAUL SAFFER. Continue reading →

Halloween hits: In the Waxworks Late Last Night

A neglected 1930 song by Charlie Higgins, exhumed for Hallowe’en by ALWYN TURNER. Continue reading →

Imperial fiction: The Lair of the White Worm

ALWYN TURNER reads Bram Stoker’s second-best-known novel – and finds there’s a steep fall-off after #1. Continue reading →

Revive 45: October 1975

Do you remember Papa’s Got a Brand New Bagpipe? ALWYN TURNER does. Continue reading →

‘I’m quite cool’ – Sadiq Khan

Mayor Sadiq Khan: a career in 55 quotes. Continue reading →

Imperial fiction: Bully, Fag and Hero

ALWYN TURNER on Charles Mansford’s ‘most unpleasant’ school story, published in 1896. Continue reading →

An unlikely morning star

PAUL SAFFER remembers the unlikely media career of Derek Jameson. Do we mean him? We surely do. Continue reading →

Revive 45: September 1975

ALWYN TURNER looks at the charts from 45 years ago and finds Mike Batt, Roger Whittaker and Leo Sayer – but mostly it’s Kenny. Continue reading →