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And so the order went out from the editorial suite on the 51st level: “No more Trump”.  And forty floors below, Stoker pulled up his green eyeshade, moodily pulled his half-written essay on Donald out of the battered Remington, and flung it at the waste paper basket, missing, as always, by a yard. Lolling back in the battered wooden chair which is standard issue to Only Connect scribblers, he surveyed the narrow view, blocked as it was by the soaring tower of Copper House, gl

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...

Several readers have told me they enjoyed the innocence in the lines from my journal of boyhood in smalltown Cheltenham. So here is another extract as preface to an event in Lima: Friday, January 6th 1956 I went to town dressed as a girl, because I didn't want to wear my school uniform. Valerie lent me her scarf to wear on my head, and said I looked like a girl. That's how the idea came. We met Rosina (my sister) and Ian (her boyfriend) in the Promenade, and he did not reco

Disillusioned with politics? Exasperated by the tedious political mudslinging? Unsure about how to vote next time? You are not alone.   Half the voters who backed Labour at the last general election have deserted the party, and the Tories would limp home with a mere 14 seats if a general election were called, according to separate polls disclosed towards the end of 2025...

Whenever I knock on doors in the UK constituency of Frome and East Somerset (FES) to find out how the occupants are likely to vote in an upcoming election, I have my phone in my hand, ready to check that I am indeed listening to the views of, say, Linda Crabtree of 56 Tyning Road, Radstock and not those of her neighbours.* The phone app is called MiniVan. On it are the names and addresses of those on the electoral register, plus questions which aim to find out the person’s po