Other Men's Flowers

Like all those of my generation (the one that grew up listening to ITMA every Friday), I have always kept myself at the cutting edge of tech...

In a report published last month the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons concluded that: By providing homeopathy on the...

No 28 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century August 1910: The Boltons living in Blackpool write to their son and dau...

In December 2008 the BBC reported on a repeat of the famous Milgram tests at Yale University , the results of which were published in 1968, ...

Here is a delightful essay by Max Beerbohm in which he paints a portrait of the Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VII. In it he t...

Over the past few weeks, my circumstances have been such that I have had to become acquainted with a number of NHS nurses. This has not been...

More re-cycled posts from 2005: people Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? TV Chelsea Flower boredom personal I was a major league bore

... or the muddied oafs at the goals. Kipling's 1902 poem The Islanders was written towards the end of the Boer War, which it calls un...

Women born with these names were later known by their husbands' surnames. Who were they? (Those marked * became much more famous than th...

No 27 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century October 1909: Is this anything like your hat? I am better again today bu...

Grumio has announced that he is calling a press conference at the O2 Arena to apologise to his family, his friends and their children, and h...

More re-cycled posts from 2005: superstition Money from your toad people A world-class bore theatre Hedda bores herself to death

On this day in 2006 I wrote about the three third-century martyrs with this name but omitted to mention the interesting fact that that the ...

The Guardian has a long-running feature called Notes & Queries in which readers send in questions on a range of topics, some frivolous ...

"I'm just ringing to let everyone know I'm an arsehole..." Private Eye

It's shamefully lackadaisical to publish a post consisting of nothing more than a couple of YouTube links, but one of these little films...

More recycled posts from 2005: food Dishes now almost forgotten, with good reason society Funerals really swing up Barnsley way people Valed...

...was founded by Edward III in 1348 to fulfil a vow made at the end of the Great Windsor Tournament of 1344. Its foundation legend is prob...

George Orwell wrote a famous essay with this title sixty-three years ago. Our political concerns are different from those of 1946 and the p...