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Gerrymandering is a fun word for something so pernicious to democracy. I have always loved the story of its origin. In 1812 the Governor...

Those of us who are just a touch old fashioned (and Stoker slightly ruefully so admits) had a strange frisson when scanning the various...

‘Echo chambers’ may not have been the word or phrase of 2023 (that was ‘authentic’ according to Merriam Webster; ‘rizz’, short for...

‘Winterreise’ was, fittingly, Schubert’s final work. He was checking the text for publishing just before he died.

I was one of the 1.2 million Brits who signed the petition calling for Paula Vennells, ex-Chief Executive of the UK's Post Office, to be...

The thirteenth of October 2023 was international day at our younger daughters’ school in Nairobi. On that day, the whole world was...

When I first read the headline on the news website, my immediate reaction was “Don’t tell me the bleeding obvious!”. I can’t recall the...

Recently, one of my in-laws announced that he and his wife had decided that when they died, they would not have a funeral, since they were..

No, really.  We won’t even say “it’s bound to be better than last year”.  Last year was OK, as years go, and whilst we all suffer from...

Among my childhood baubles, one item stood out: a shellac 78 rpm record of Enrico Caruso singing ‘La donna è mobile’ from Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto