Philip Hensher

Profile: Full name: Philip Hensher Area of interest: Arts, Culture, Society, Politics (esp. political intervention in Arts and Culture) Journals/Organisation: The Independent | The Daily Telegraph Email: p.hensher@independent.co.uk Personal website: Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/philip-hensher Blog: Representation: Networks: Philip Hensher: I've given up Twitter. Should you follow my example? - The Independent, 29th August 2011

Biography: About: Education: Tapton School, Sheffield; Oxford University; Cambridge University: Eighteenth-century English painting and satire (PhD) Cambridge University: Eighteenth-century English painting and satire (PhD) Career: House of Commons clerk: 1990/1996 Contemporarywriters.com: biography (British Council) Current position/role: Commentator also writes/has written for: Reviews and articles to The Spectator, Mail on Sunday, The Daily Telegraph, Granta Other roles/Main role: Author; Associate Professor, University of Exeter - staff profiles: contact details / research interests / publications Other activities: Wrote a libretto to Thomas Ades’s opera, Powder Her Face (1995), which has been performed internationally, recorded by EMI and filmed by Channel Four Disclosures: Viewpoints/Insight: Contemporarywriters.com: Critical perspective (British Council) Broadcast media: Video: Regular broadcaster IMDb Controversy/Criticism: Awards/Honours: Member of the Council of the Royal Society of Literature (made a Fellow in 1998) Somerset Maugham Award (Kitchen Venom) Journalist of the Year in the Stonewall Awards, 2007 Scoops: Other: Listed as one of the hundred most influential LGBT people in Britain, 2006: Pink List, The Independent on Sunday, 2nd July 2006

Books & Debate: The northern clemency (2008) OCLC 183146398, (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) My dog Ian (2005) OCLC 64064743 Jack Milroy: doodling with intent (2005) OCLC 501332018 with AS Byatt The fit (2004) OCLC 55999041 The Mulberry Empire (2002) OCLC 59421139 The bedroom of the mister’s wife (1999) OCLC 41310720 Pleasured (1998) OCLC 40170746 Kitchen venom (1996) OCLC 35030512 (winner of the Somerset Maugham award) Other Lulus (1994) OCLC 30110587 ✒ Philip's page at Amazon ✒ Latest work: King of the badgers OCLC695008618, Fourth Estate, March 2011 Speaking/Appearances: Debate:

The Independent: Column name: Remit/Info: Arts, Culture, Society, Politics (esp. political intervention in Arts and Culture) Section: Role: Commentator Pen-name: Email: p.hensher@independent.co.uk Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/philip-hensher Commissioning editor: Day published: (usually) Monday Regularity: Weekly Column format: Average length:

Articles: 2012 All journals Will nobody mourn the death of classical music? - There's probably no noise which gives me more pleasure than the first two bars of Beethoven 7 - 19th May It's tough to sack a civil servant (I should know) - The number of civil servants has, interestingly, dropped very substantially under the Coalition - 12th May There are some crime stories that will never reveal their ending - The urges of narrative have their own place. But life does not always conform to its structures - 5th May The spies who failed to notice a dead co-worker - You would expect a faster response to a disappearance if you worked on a till at Tesco - 28th April Do you think people can be 'cured' of their sexuality through prayer? Get over it! - The idea that anyone can be "cured" of their sexuality through prayer or psychiatric treatment is thoroughly discredited - 14th April A politician's wealth is fascinating, but it's not necessarily our business - How gripping it would be to discover how much one’s friends and enemies made last year - 7th April The Swedes have the right idea on binge drinking - The authorities should deny all supermarkets an alcohol licence. Let it be sold through specialist outlets - 24th March Against gay marriage? Too late, it's already here - I don’t know a single person in a civil partnership who doesn’t refer to themselves as being married - 17th March Is it a castle – or is it just a source of capital? - The mansion tax strikes hard at something close to the English heart. Houses are extensions of the self - 10th March We turn up our music to cover the screams - The horrible thing about the murder of 15-year-old Kristy Bamu is that so many people were aware of it as it took its four-day course Of Blackadder and white women of a certain age - There are voices out there which traditional media neglect through their age, ethnicity, culture, sexuality - 24th February All very well in a gallery, but can you imagine living with the icon of urban depression? - A City acquaintance had a Damien Hirst medicine cabinet, to the occasional confusion of his guests - 22nd February Gatsby: a story that suits our age - F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel dissecting 1920s America is being filmed again and adapted for several stage productions. Why now? - 12th February Do you want an experience or just to film it? - Sarah Millican is right. It's theft, as much as if you went into Waterstones and photocopied a new novel - 10th February My solution to the Falklands problem: sell them - I doubt we have much stomach for another war in the south Atlantic. And we need the money - 3rd February Sergei Polunin and a lesson for Labour - Institutions need stars, and stars don't necessarily like institutions - 27th January Rejecting Oxbridge isn't clever – it's a mistake - It is a great shame if brilliant young people think Oxford is just a posh place with impractical architecture - 20th January Genius is just a matter of taste - Hockney is a fascinating but quirky artist. Some will think his show is horrible - 16th January Leave the apostrophe alone – it makes sense - We should be more possessive about our punctuation, whatever 'Waterstones’ thinks - 13th January

Articles: 2011 All journals A warship in the Thames is taking security too far - Warships? Surface-to-air missiles? An army of 42,000? Wellington only needed 68,000 at Waterloo - 29th December Why didn't they steal those halfwits at St Pancras? - You can value the bronze in a Hepworth, but how are you going to price up the holes, the gap, the shining aura? - 22nd December Google shows us who we really are. It's not pretty - Is this what every great liberation of information discovers: the base aspect of human nature triumphs? - 16th December Universities need cash – but not just anyone's - When an institution gains a gleaming new wing, we should ask what abasements have occurred - 2nd December The state wants to know what you're up to. But why do we let it? - What drives the spread of surveilliance is not a desire to diminish evil, but the desire to control - 17th November The Brontë sisters are always our contemporaries - The madness of Wuthering Heights seems exactly right for societies that find themselves contemplating the abyss - 13th November Shakespeare, salaries – and inequality - Poverty has no place in our society. But how will reducing chief execs’ pay help? - 29th October Werritty had a priceless commodity - Liam Fox shows that Access is no kind of basis for government to be transacted - 15th October Embrace your inner weirdo, Ed - Let's not pretend that any politicians are remotely normal - 3rd October Assange believes in two types of truth - On WikiLeaks' own principles, publication of Julian Assange's memoir without his permission would be justified24th September We must save Roal Dahl's writing hut - Money spent on saving a great writer's habitat is money well spent - 18th September Decline and fall - the world envisaged in chaos theory is now with us - Poor countries are helped out by rich countries. And what happens when rich countries, through their munificence, become poor countries? - 17th September Jackie Kennedy-Onassis finds a voice - Seventeen years after her Jackie Onassis's death, one of the true icons of the 20th century still has the ability to shock America - 15th September The countryside is an illusion - We assume most newly-built houses are an abomination. But it need not be so - 5th September Supple's plays trip off the tongues - The week in culture: Whenever the Edinburgh festival rolls round, one of the most curious phenomena is, surely, the taste for theatre in a foreign language - 2nd September I've given up Twitter. Should you follow my example? - Social media are not a conversation. Nor are they a publication. They may not even be something in between. They may very well be something entirely new - 29th August I've given up Twitter. Should you follow my example - Social media are not a conversation. Nor are they a publication. They may not even be something in between. They may very well be something entirely new - 29th August Germany doesn't want to dominate Europe – that is part of the problem - In every respect, German culture remains unfamiliar to the British - 20th August I'm a bleeding-heart liberal - so, what am I to make of these sickening scenes? - Unlike the riots of 30 years ago, actions last week had no clear explanation. And that's a real challenge for the chattering classes - 14th August Faraway places mean more to us now - You don’t need to be a historian to empathise with the plight of Syrians - 13th August Throw the book at the wrecking crew - Waterstone's in the Clapham Junction precinct was not attacked by rioters - 12th August Millions, billions, trillions...We lack the imagination to grasp these sums - People don't understand what big money is at all. We have so few opportunities to understand it without living through the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany - 6th August A different class of literature - The week in culture: With the death of Stan Barstow, a distinctive and important part of English fiction comes to an end - 5th August At last – a public figure who refuses to deny their past - Louise Mensch’s response is the sight of a strong-minded person - 1st August In a menacing world, we flee into thrillers - Dominating both the Booker Prize longlist and the bestseller charts, the thriller has become society's favourite means of escape - 30th July This common coinage could be the undoing of all that unites Europe - A shared money suddenly seems a weak bond. What started as a brave partnership starts to look like an over-ambitious dog-walker’s outing - 23rd July It's not just the noise – it's the people - These days, if people do something, they insist on their right to do it - 16th July Fiction takes you to places that life can't - It takes a novelist, not a psychologist, to explain why people act out of character - 9th July Richard III and the lost art of creating truly wicked villains - Today's authors are too full of human sympathy to create the truly dastardly evildoers of yore - 3rd July Why Gay Pride still matters - Violence against gay people is on the increase, and there is an undeniable culture of homophobia in the media - 2nd July It's a performance just to enter the UK - The week in culture: For centuries, the life of the arts has depended on the occasional shot in the arm delivered by glamorous visitors. When Handel, Mozart or Haydn turned up in London in the 18th century, the result was a huge new public audience for music - 1st July Bullying us won't change our behaviour - It defies common sense that a man of 65 risks his health by having a daily pint - 25th June Boastfulness is the new modesty - If you pick up the newspapers, read a random blog, watch the television, you won’t have to wait long before somebody offers up part of their life for your admiration - 19th June When Christianity meets politics - Mitre or no mitre, the Archbishop's views have no privileged position - 11th June The plague in our cashmere-filled closets - A friend said casually, 'You've got a hole in that sweater'. I looked, and it was so - 4th June We should cherish all accents - Cheryl Cole is returning home, defeated by those who couldn’t understand her - 28th May For all his dazzling genius, Philip Roth still leaves me cold - Philip Roth may be the greatest living master of the novel, but sometimes it takes more than mastery to win us over - 22nd May Is evil a no-go area for the imagination? - Lars von Trier is a film director who is drawn to extreme states - 21st May Domesday lessons for the e-generation - This season’s technological advancement will be unusable in 15 years’ time - 14th May An extraordinary legacy of goodness - Even in extreme circumstances people turn out to be modest, generous and thoughtful - 7th May Rules of behaviour that vex us all - One of the familiar errors in literary dialogue lies in the use of the word "Dear" as a vocative - 30th April A masque would live in the memory - Years after the fact, what survives of these great royal occasions are the sideshows. What must have seemed, during the festivities, something to tickle the onlookers and fill a few hours between parties comes in time to seem the thing which lasts - 29th April Less home cooking than foam cooking - About five years ago, an Argentinian steak house opened just round the corner from us in Battersea - 23rd April Kissing in public is not a universal right - Not so long ago, it was not uncommon to make requests of people to modify their behaviour, if it was intruding on you - 16th April When a trip to Spain is a piece of theatre - An air of dreamy strangeness hangs over the PM's descent into ordinariness - 9th April Are we finally growing out of the whole lunacy of royal weddings? - Perhaps we have got to the point where deference and admiration are offered to people who have actually earned them - 2nd April If you've got it, give some of it away - How many Premier League footballers give regularly to institutions? - 26th March Fifty books a year is ideal... - ... but why stop at schoolchildren? - 23rd March A portrait of us as we see ourselves - The census was never going to have an easy ride, this time round - 12th March A rock star could provide as much glamour as a prince - The element that attracts the punters is not possessed exclusively by royalty - 8th March Shocking and disrespectful – but illegal? - You can never predict where laws on desecration will fall most heavily - 26th February Deep in the enchanted forest, a very English sensibility has stirred - Forests are places of dapplement, of light and shade. At the back of everything is Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, turning the social hierarchy upside down - 19th February The University debate: There's more than one way to learn - Going up to Oxford taught the novelist Philip Hensher life's possibilities. Going straight into employment gave the entrepreneur Simon Dolan a head start at work. So who had the advantage? - 18th February Why stay at home for the best education? - Are we, in general, stick-in-the-muds? Do students hate abroad, or something? - 12th February Bohemia has fallen to the bankers - The steady flow of young people into Berlin has become a torrent. The city’s purpose is vanishing - 5th February All alone, even when we're together - The curious thing is that these devices, which isolate users so effectively from the world around them, are often propagated as a means of social connection - 29th January Are the British just too phlegmatic? - When a train in India was 23 minutes late, it caused violent protest - 15th January The authors who are first among sequels - Some writers are more popular than others when it comes to unfinished literary busines - 14th January

Articles: 2010 All of us knew Pooky would be famous one day - University produced conspicuous figures, whose future we took for granted - 28th December Every bubble has to burst eventually - The market in all sorts of things is moving eastwards, but few so fascinatingly as the market in vintage wines - 23rd December Christmas puts us all on a stage. Is that why we've come to dread it? - Somewhere in one of Elizabeth Taylor's novels, a character makes the cardinal error of alluding, casually, to Christmas in the middle of November. "Oh, don't," her friend responds with, Taylor says, "all the English dread Christmas" - 18th December Stop worrying – the kids will be all right - Sooner or later, kids are going to say 'sod it' and invent their own adventures - 11th December Thatcherite' – an insult that's had its day - There are plenty of openly Conservative people who go round boldly calling themselves "Thatcherite" - 4th December 2010 Can you say good morning in Bengali? - Even if we learn Mandarin to negotiate over bulk prices for widgets rather than read the poetry of Li Po, the humanising influence will make itself known - 27th November One couple's happiness will not translate into national self-esteem - The unavoidable notion that a royal wedding is somehow related to the mood of the nation is impossible to date back beyond the late 19th century - 20th November Don't expect the authorities to get the joke - This might have been funny, if anyone involved had shown any judgement - 13th November That's too much information, Google - In Britain, Street View seemed like a fairly innocuous photographic map. To the rest of Europe it was considered a gross invasion of privacy - 6th November Forgotten monarchs made for Hollywood - Recent films about royalty have emphasised the dullness of their lives - 25th October Why modern art is a matter of experience - Many visitors hardly care whether it is art or not, so long as it's fun - 18th October The objects of my affection - I knew this was going to be good when, quite early on, I learnt from this radio series how to pronounce 'metope' - 15th October Human rights, in the Chinese sense - It was an undeniably bad week for the Chinese government - 11th October The dark side of surveillance - Students of thirty years ago didn't film each other’s sexual misbehaviour - 4th October Only gay in the village? Not quite - Frankly, it’s the Don’t Knows in this doorstep survey that I wonder about - 27th September The joy of living in a phone-free world - Let’s not make surveillance seem normal by incorporating it in to our social lives - 20th September Power at last – but to what purpose? - This conference will be fascinating. From the floor will arise endless complaint at the terrible fact that their party is in government - 18th September Stage leads screen in a gender agenda - Theatre has been much bolder than cinema in casting against convention - 13th September Honourable egging tradition under threat - You could do some damage with a shoe, but an egg only causes loss of dignity - 6th September Who will hold the RSPCA to account? - If Ms Bale committed a crime against a cat, let the police prosecute her - 30th August The key to a good party is to forget it - David Miliband is slowly revealing his brilliant gift for embarrassing behaviour - 23rd August University isn’t right for everyone - The next generation may learn a lesson, and choose a different path - 16th August There's more to marriage than you think - Understanding of marriage has altered over time and across cultures - 14th August Rake's still making perfect progress - The week in culture - 13th August Dictionary can’t have the last word - Fans of that movie classic, Mean Girls, will remember Gretchen’s unsuccessful efforts to introduce a new word - 9th August Works of art are not child's play - There's no such thing as a slump in art sales, it seems, for some artists - 6th August Let's hear it for the traffic warden - 2nd August Sorry need not be the hardest word - In Northern Ireland young offenders can choose to meet with their victims - 26th July Sarah Palin's struggle with English language - Sarah Palin's 'refudiate' was a shocker, but Shakespeare and Carroll were at it too - 21st July How short can a short story be? - In the age of Twitter 10-word stories require a very slow reader - 19th July These little Toniblers set a fine example -Blair is such a hero to Kosovan families that some name their sons after him - 12th July There's more to gay stereotyping than Kylie. So here's my guide... - One of the curious things about gay male society, as glimpsed from the world of the heterosexual, is that it gets represented by marginal and rather outdated images - 10th July Miliband’s choice reads like a fairy-tale - Adult readers are including juvenile works in their reading matter - 28th June Plus ça change for the Mr Gradgrinds - What use is conversation? Or friendship? What function does the enjoyment of art or literature serve? - 20th June Censoring TV isn’t a minority interest - Ofcom say that “loony”, “nutter”, “poof” and “queer” are fine at any time of day - 14th June Too soon to call time on a vintage show - After 37 years, Last Of The Summer Wine has come to an end - 7th June At the end of the day, a cliché has its uses - One writer's hackneyed horror may be a source of delight for others - 1st June It was secrecy, not privacy, that Laws wanted - Remember, the Lib Dems are a party with no ethnic minority MPs - 31st May The 'comedy' of my All Souls exam - I’d like to know that there was still some home for mad old farts in the world - 24th May Chopped by the Butchers of Broadway - As a British play closes in New York thanks to a single review, Philip Hensher asks why US critics are so resistant to our artistic charms - 17th May It’s as simple as holding hands - A London man, Dave Watkins, noticed that many gay people, perfectly happy and open in all other parts of their lives, preferred to walk through the streets anonymously - 17th May Let’s hear it for ‘baggage-handling’ - 10th May We the panel hoped to surprise: we even included two painters - "Well," a journalist and art-world insider said to me, slightly reprovingly. We were at the breakfast to announce the shortlist for this year's Turner Prize, which I've been judging this year. "Normally I manage to guess at least one artist in advance." I apologised: but secretly I felt rather pleased - 5th May Tories have given up on the gay vote - No party has its hands completely clean in this area- 3rd May At least make use of the Papal visit - He will meet no gays, no single mothers, no one who doesn’t believe in God - 26th April A few more ruins is just what we need - David Cameron launched his party's manifesto at Battersea Power Station the other day - 15th April Let's start counting the cost of health - Why didn't I know how much my medicine actually costs the NHS? - 5th April Greatness that I didn't even have to pay for - It was a noble gesture to make this marvellous Kobke exhibition free - 29th March Why Austen would never win the Booker - The ambitious novel with a regard for humour is not dead, but is beleaguered - 22nd March Silence can be golden in our critical world - Audiences seem to be demanding more rights: to applaud, shriek and interrupt - 15th March Why don't we put animals on trial? - Pre-modern justice did not limit its attentions to human beings - 8th March The eternal wonder of Alice in Wonderland - Spirited and suspicious of authority, Lewis Carroll's greatest creation has much to teach us today - 2nd March The waste of time that is careers advice - Even now, children of doctors become doctors, and children of manual labourers become manual labourers - 1st March Homeopathy is a waste of NHS money - We don't object to people spending their healthcare money on anything they choose - 22nd February We have a right to know BBC salaries - If you work for the BBC, you are, like a lottery winner, allowed to tick the "no publicity" box - 15th February Polite guests always eat the weirdest meat - Unlike the Chancellor, I'd have leapt at the chance of eating seal - 8th February Salinger's legacy may lie in ashes - The last time J D Salinger made a considered, edited literary statement was in 1965. It was a long and bizarre short story, called "Hapworth 16, 1924" - 1st February Terrible news made worse in the telling - Friends and family were astonished to read in La Nazione an interview with Guido - 25th January Google's book 'deal' has left me confused - I don't like the idea of someone fiddling with my ownership of my own books - 18th January Lifelong lessons learnt at the double bass - The Festival of British Youth Orchestras has been cancelled this year for lack of funds. It takes place every August in Edinburgh. It's had some problems recently in fulfilling its remit – it's become overwhelmingly a festival of Scottish youth orchestras, last year attracting only one orchestra from elsewhere in Britain - 11th January Blasphemy laws can only invite trouble - None of us likes being insulted, but only a priest seeks to pass a law against it - 4th January

Articles: 2009 Independence day for a land with no name - This month, the southern half of Sudan moved closer to independence. The ruling party in Khartoum and the former rebels in the south agreed terms for a referendum, to be held in 2011. Nobody thinks that the result is likely to result in anything but a vote for independence. But one issue hasn't been resolved, as far as I know. What will the new country be called? - 28th December Homosexuality, death and the BBC licence fee - Well, how would you feel? An organisation which you pay a three-figure sum to, every year, decides that it is going to spend some of that money on debating whether you should be executed or not - 21st December Curling up with a good e-book? - Digital books will transform the world of publishing. Who now will be the true guardians of literary merit - 17th December It looks this cheap because it cost so much - Misguidedly, I took a seat in the front row of the preview theatre to see Where the Wild Things Are - 14th December Days of the Library Stinker are numbered - There's always been a gruesome whiffer in every library - 7th December Cormac McCarthy's typewriter: A writer and his tools are seldom parted - Once they find a favourite way of getting their words on paper - or screen - novelists normally stick with it - 3rd December Respect the critics' sober judgements - The Persians, according to some ancient historians, made decisions twice: once when they were drunk, and again when they were sober. According to the playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker, the theatre critics who have just panned her new play about Degas only half-followed this practice and forgot the sober part - 30th November Gaffes that can be a boon to Cameron - The expenses scandal too will be seen as a helpful winnowing exercise - 23rd November Computers have a lot to learn about grammar - We're all getting, I fear, a computerised reading device for Christmas, allowing us to read the complete works of dozens of novelists through the magic of a seven-by-four screen. What happens if the logical conclusion is reached, and the computer takes to reading what we write, and judging it, too? - 16th November Berlin... but that was in another country - A great wall rises up between us and what we remember - 9th November What students should learn about learning - The "consumer revolution" in universities continues apace, and tomorrow a paper will be published by Lord Mandelson setting out the detailed public information universities must provide - 2nd November When death triumphs over the writer's art - For 30 years, a famous bundle of 138 index cards has remained in a Swiss bank vault. Famous, but seen by hardly anybody. The novel that Vladimir Nabokov was working on at the time of his death, The Original of Laura, was preserved by his family against his apparent wishes to have it destroyed if he died with it unfinished - 26th October Seeing the world through hipsters' eyes - The fashion trend is easier to spot than any trend in the art on display - 19th October Some things should stay in the hinterland - Buchan's career as a politician-writer now seems impossible to emulate - 12th October The Cameron dilemma for impressionists - Our respectable, well-scrubbed politicians have cartoonists in despair - 5th October Flummoxed by foreign tongues - What was the BBC doing, sending a reporter who can't speak German? - 1st October The art of death on a mass scale - At any period in history, the Aztecs' customs would have been regarded as abhorrent - 28th September Alesha for Arlene is pure dumbing down - Would the BBC broadcast football with commentary by Nigella Lawson? - 21st September The best way to apologise to Alan Turing - What happened to Turing is happening all the time all over the world - 14th September Should the BNP sit with the grown-ups? - The BBC must respect free speech, but free speech is limited by law - 7th September The deadliest rivalry lurks in literary festivals - Some writers treat them as a brute Darwinian struggle for survival - 31st August The war of the Great Scented Candle Divide - When a widely practised social custom is discovered to be bad for you, there will be some shock and resentment. The habit of creating small fires in our own homes, polluting the air we breathe, doesn't sound like an obviously healthy or sensible idea - 24th August When Reader's Digest ruled - The last time I saw it was in a dentist's waiting room - 21st August What we need is a certificate for toaster use - When Bobby McHale, a 15-year-old from Bury, went on a Bury and Rochdale Active Generation summer school, he was hoping to be taught new skills and be given new challenges. He didn't realise that the educational scheme was keeping such a close eye on his achievements. A while after returning, Bobby got a certificate, issued by an examination board, for one aspect of the scheme - 17th August The mysteries of humanity know no end - There doesn't seem to be a clear evolutionary advantage in acting unselfishly - 10th August The free offers that deserve to be spurned - A Japanese couple, on holiday in Rome, went into quite a nice-looking restaurant. They ordered pasta, fish, and ice cream and a bottle of sauvignon blanc - 3rd August When it comes to loos, Japan's are the business - Going to the lavatory in Japan is a perfect delight - 29th July Med losing the war against drunken Brits - The English go abroad to drink, often to take drugs, and to have as much sex as possible - 20th July Violence in the classroom is a two-way affair - A story in which a teacher is alleged to have struck a 14-year-old boy with a heavy weight, leading to his hospitalisation and a charge of attempted murder may seem to be a clear-cut one. Things, however, are not necessarily so straightforward, and a horrible story has more than one aspect - 13th July Forget about a 'cure' for homosexuality - It grows increasingly hard to tell the difference between bishops of the Church of England and Paris Hilton - 6th July The ugly cost of a sexy new look - The fashion industry has only a limited interest in difference - 29th June No pain like having to get rid of books - 22nd June Putin, art and the 'sausage sword' debate - Vladimir Putin was paying a visit to one of the best-known of Russian painters, Ilya Glazunov, the other day. All was going well, until he ventured away from the usual exchanges of civility between artists and rulers, and suddenly, and quite rudely, remarked of a painting of a medieval knight: "That sword's too short. It's only good to cut sausage." - 15th June English should not just be for girls - Men are being disadvantaged through a shift in emphasis - 8th June It's high time we had a new government - When Damian Green, the shadow Immigration minister, was apprehended by police and questioned about the leak of government documents, attention was focused on him. The constitutional outrage of the police entering the Palace of Westminster and trying to arrest an opposition spokesman for efficiently doing his job appeared the most important aspect of the case - 11th May A Laureate's poems are all that matter - 4th May Let's celebrate oysters and asparagus - The last weekend of April could be Seasonal Food Weekend - 27th April What worked in Venezuela won't do so here - Their fortissimo is exhilarating, like a stiff gale on a mountain top - 20th April Museums are being wrecked by piped music - At the Victoria and Albert Museum's new Baroque show, I was trying to concentrate on what might strike some people as an unnecessarily complicated object when, quite suddenly, the band struck up above my head - 13th April What would we do without Dame Viv? - The developing depression in the global economy is having many disastrous effects. But surely one of the lesser ones is that the inhabitants of Moscow are no longer going to be able to buy the mini-crini, the ripped pirate-style jacket, the safety-pinned T-shirt or any other of Vivienne Westwood's creations - 6th April Does anyone really understand the National Curriculum? - Teachers must live in dread of the man from the ministry making a visit - 3rd April Wrestling with the outer limits of language - Language is interesting not just when it is exotic and static, but when it is in the process of development - 30th March Give us a nice day out and we're happy - The principle of the Nice Day Out is, for middle-class English people, so ingrained in their cultural existence that we have a tendency to think the habit universal - 23rd March On a fast track to joined-up thinking - Jargon is how the professions like to distinguish themselves - 19th March Students who think they can do no wrong - Education can't avoid making children feel bad from time to time - 16th March The legend of Arthur must leave no legacy - Scargill's account of the 1984 strike, published over the weekend, is a statement of quite astonishing self-delusion - 9th March So sharp they've cut themselves - Tragic news from the coalface. Arts administrators for Arts Council England (ACE) are facing a grim future as their traditional occupations have been declared to be no longer economic - 2nd March An ambitious author and a banned book - Not every culture in the world has our freedom of publication - 23rd February Been there, done that is our dilemma - Where on earth do people go for their honeymoon these days, now that everyone's been everywhere already? - 16th February Wikipedia is beautiful, but never perfect - Wikipedia is surely one of the most brilliant ideas of the century so far. Starting with a blank sheet on 15 January, 2001, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales invited internet users to write an online encyclopedia of unlimited scope, without supervisory editing. The users would write, debate, edit, and supplement the individual entries - 9th February Sorry Wendy, but we need to keep the Poet Laureate - Wendy Cope has a curious sideline to her career as a likeable poet. It consists of denying that she has any intention of becoming Poet Laureate - 2nd February The BBC is too impartial to suffering - The trouble is that the BBC's requirement for impartiality has enabled it, yet again, to do nothing. Yet that inactivity does not have a neutral result - 26th January The religious find a friend in the law - Now people of religious beliefs think it perfectly all right to hawk their consciences round the country until they find a sympathetically minded director of a complaints agency or head of an employment tribunal - 12th January Shakespeare, Dickens and Palin. Discuss - Michael Palin is a kindly and intelligent soul, but one thing I doubt he would ever claim to be is a pillar of English literature - 5th January Recycling titles? It's fine by me - A new novel by Sarah Waters is always going to cause great excitement - 2nd January

Articles: 2008 Glastonbury's internet fix: use crystals - What happens if all those invisible ray jobbies are broadcasting straight into your chakras? - 29th December 2008 This hatred will not defeat love - On the one hand, there are those who struggle to save the rainforests, with all their diversity, complexity and life. On the other, there are those who fight to oppress and erase that familiar and omnipresent human quirk known as homosexuality - 24th December 2008 Can I be Nigella's friend? - Nigella's friends are a glimpse of a glorious future - 22nd December 2008 I'm not giving in to the BBC's hired thugs - The TV Licensing letters are arrogant, bullying and quite dishonest - 15th December 2008 Help save the review (and the reviewer) - Newspapers are going through a period of change, no one can doubt that. Under the pressure of the internet and its myriad contributors, the purpose of pages of criticism seems less obvious as it once was to some owners and editors - 11th December 2008 Showing Syria our fragile side is our strength - Showcasing Syrian treasures will go further than conventional diplomacy - 1st December 2008 Was Mason a racist, or just an imbecile? - Wittgenstein would have been greatly interested by the case of the BBC Bristol presenter and the taxi cab. Anyone looking at it will find it difficult to classify some of the statements made in the course of the events as meaningful in any sense - 17th November 2008 Scent and the secret of daily hedonism - Daily aesthetic delights are all around us, if only we have the energy to take pleasure in observing them - 10th November 2008 The Week In Culture: For Grenada, the long wait is over - 7th November 2008 Grisly appeal of student life in Perugia - 3rd November 2008 How can we get Jamie et al to read? - what kind of example is a parent setting his children who repeats not only that he has never read a book, but appears to be proud of the fact? - 27th October 2008 Forget about writing if you're on the Booker - 20th October 2008 Thank God for the Bible Society - We can certainly admire the zeal which will preserve a language - 13th October 2008 Take a tip from Heston, Jamie - It would be easy to dismiss Heston Blumenthal as a complete irrelevance. But what, surely, is missing in Mr Oliver's approach is exactly what Blumenthal represents, an idea of culinary fantasy - 6th October 2008 You didn't do anything wrong, Miriam - Miriam Margolyes, that wonderful actor, had a sad story to tell to Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs last week. Forty years ago, in her early twenties, she told her mother that she was a lesbian - 2nd October 2008 Alitalia flies into the sunset, and not before time - 16th September 2008 There's only one way to find out what art is 'worth' – and Damien Hirst knows it - 8th September 2008 Why go to a concert if all you want to do is film it? You should be dancing... - 1st September 2008 We're attempting to define the indefinable for 2012 - 25th August 2008 Not all good schools require a king's ransom - 18th August 2008 What scandal lurks behind 'The Wire'? - 15th August 2008 Simple rules for eating abroad - 11th August 2008 My take on the great vibrato debate - Friday, 8th August 2008 Why Britain's foodies are digging truffles - Thursday, 7th August 2008 A sucker for the 007 experience - Friday, 1st August 2008 Never mind the flags, just enjoy the music - Monday, 21st July 2008 Some will throw a party, others a brick - Monday, 14th July 2008 Debunking this myth of harmless celebrity - Monday, 7th July 2008 Who needs nice? What we want is a winner - Monday, 30th June 2008 Protection for older people comes not before time - Monday, 23rd June 2008 Is it safe to revisit the harems? - Friday, 20th June 2008 Ban supermarkets from selling alcohol - Tuesday, 17th June 2008 The peculiarities of English retain its spell - Monday, 9th June 2008 The fine line between high art and erotica - Monday, 2nd June 2008 Britain, 2008... it's our statues that will tell all - Monday, 26th May 2008 Now we've all signed up to the freak show - Monday, 19th May 2008 The answer lies in the length of men's shorts - Monday, 12th May 2008 The classical allusion makes a comeback - Monday, 5th May 2008 An airport security measure I can't face - Monday, 28th April 2008 Nice to see the Royals boosting the economy - Monday, 21st April What the Dickens is she talking about? - Monday, 14th April 2008 You and your friends can come out of the closet now, Mr Humphries - In the 1970s, the likes of John Inman had to deny their homosexuality in spite of their obviously gay acts. But why are modern gay comics still peddling the tired old stereotypes? - Sunday, 13th April 2008 Banning Boris-ing is a waste of time - Monday 7th April 2008 Don't dismiss 'Heat'. It's a very superior product - Thursday, 3rd April 2008 Why pretend that opera is funky? - Friday, 28th March 2008 What do politicians know about teaching? - Tuesday, 25th March 2008 The reckless hedonism that shames Britons abroad - Tuesday, 18th March 2008 There is no logic to our treatment of Mehdi Kazemi - Thursday, 13th March 2008 A train company that turns passengers into victims - Tuesday, 4th March 2008 Being gay is no longer disapproved of. Hiding it is - Tuesday, 26th February 2008 How can you learn a language and not speak it? - Tuesday, 19th February 2008 This phoney vision of cultural renaissance - Thursday, 14th February 2008 Why I always savour the taste of a good cookery book - Tuesday, 12th February 2008 We need straight talk when it comes to terror - Tuesday, 5th February 2008 Don't let McDonald's dish out burger bar A-levels - Tuesday, 29th January 2008 Sock it to 'em, Paxo – you're fighting for us all - Tuesday, 22nd January 2008 How wrong of Oxford to still the call to prayer - Tuesday, 15th January 2008 Raise the curtain on another daft musical - Tuesday, 8th January 2008 I always knew that pottering was good for you - Tuesday, 1st January 2008

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