Paris
No city really multitasks like Paris, shorthand for romance, culture, fashion, gastronomy and the kind of street life you find…
Secrets of Candleford: the real Flora Thompson
Melanie McDonagh on Flora Thompson, whose revealing account of rural Oxfordshire life at the turn of the 19th century became a literary classic
Forgive me, Father
What Catholics really talk about in the confession box
François Hollande - all the president's women
Hollande’s affair demonstrates that the French are becoming more puritanical about monogamy
How we lost the seasons
... for tomorrow traditional seasonal rituals may just be ghostly memories of a vanished world, says Melanie McDonagh
The best children's books for Christmas
Animal stories for children are always tricky; as J.R.R. Tolkien observed in his essay on fairy stories, you can end…
The man who made it OK to talk about immigration
How Professor Paul Collier has bypassed the liberal taboo on discussing immigration
Helen Fielding has lost her touch
To understand quite how disgruntled the reviews of the latest Bridget Jones diaries have been, you have to recall quite…
Less sex please, we're British
From Bridget Jones to prime-time telly, porn culture is now mainstream
Do women want what they say they want?
What do women want? You might have thought the Wife of Bath had got this one sorted, but Daniel Bergner…
Why G.K. Chesterton shouldn’t be made a saint
G.K. Chesterton was a great journalist, not an angel
Sorry – the Vikings really were that bad
Forget that guff about peaceful farmers with an interest in travel
The Modern Peasant, by JoJo Tulloch - review
You know that something’s afoot when Lakeland says so. Lakeland is the kitchenware company which has more of a finger…
Philip Bobbitt on Machiavelli, Obama and David Cameron
Few of today’s statesmen, says Philip Bobbitt, deserve comparison with the ‘seriously ethical’ author of The Prince
