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In 1485, Johannes Trithemius*, abbot of Sponheim in what is now western Germany, wrote a passionate treatise explaining why the newly invented printing press was a dangerous mistake. For Trithemius, the act of writing brought monks closer to God, and the printing press was a dangerous error. Besides the proximity to God, Trithemius was concerned about the source of his Benedictine monastery's income.

On the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, I crossed the Arctic Circle heading north. I wasn’t aiming for Greenland, hoping to stake my claim before Trump got there; I was chasing the receding polar night line. We never quite caught up with it; we arrived at Norway’s northernmost point three days late. North Cape had daylight. But the interval between nominal sunrise and nominal sunset was supposedly an hour and a half; it was hard to tell...

On 28th Dec 2025, we heard of the death of Brigitte Bardot, perhaps one of the greatest sex symbols of the 20th century. Yet fame doesn’t always last: neither my younger wife nor my two youngest daughters had ever heard of her. But I am glad our editor has such a good memory because he reminded me of a story that I told him more than half a century ago. The story takes me back to 1966, two years before I left school.

My mother-in-law, Jane, will be ninety-nine years old in February. Her first forty-five years – working in the UK's Land Army during World War 2, engaged at seventeen to a man killed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, escaping a first marriage in Tanganyika to find a second husband in Kenya, widowed at thirty with an eighteen-month old daughter (my wife), rebuilding a life in England with almost no money, married for a third time to a man eight years younger than her – were

Oh, how we Brits are enjoying France’s political travails! The UK’s mainstream media, reliably francophobe when it comes to politics, economic policy and business, have revelled in the inability of President Emmanuel Macron to keep his prime ministers for longer than a few months. They have welcomed his attempts to reform the French economy but mock the French people’s unwillingness to accept the consequences - working longer hours, retiring later, and taking smaller pensions