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I believe in chiromancy as much as I believe in necromancy, which, before you recoil in horror, means not at all. Or maybe I should say I didn’t believe in either. Perhaps now as I grow older, I’m changing my mind, based partly on strange new findings in physics, a tale which I shall leave for another day.

Every 45 minutes, a man in the UK dies from prostate cancer and the latest official report leaves a troubling question hanging in the air: are we really fighting prostate cancer with the ambition, purpose and coordination it demands?

The British generation now drawing its old age pensions differs markedly in at least one respect from Generation X or Z or Q, or whatever now supports the Green Party. Us oldies spent most of our young lives smelling of slightly stale tobacco, with ash trays (occasionally even emptied) in every room of the house, and at every opportunity, flicking lighters for a quick draw. And there were plenty of opportunities: in the lecture hall, on buses and trains, in aircraft (later,

There are currently a whole host of things to write about. I considered a number of them for my contribution to this month’s Only Connect. Should I write about the worrying rise of anti-Semitism; the attempts by the Labour government to bring in a blasphemy law by the backdoor with their committee discussing a definition of Islamophobia; David Lammy’s proposals to do away with jury trials for any offence for which the maximum jail time is less than three years; the concomitan

Last month, on 29 November, the British House of Commons, the lower house of the UK Parliament, passed a Private Members Bill* put...