Simon Heffer's Blog, page 17

The greatest sitcom ever made: The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

T he golden age of the sitcom is supposed to have been between the mid Sixties and the late Eighties: from Steptoe and Son to Only Fools and Horses .

From the cricket field to the battlefield, we honour the fallen

W e saw last Friday, at the services for the centenary of the Battle of the Somme , how we collectively mourn the losses on the most terrible day in the history of our Army: and each family and each community will have its own special reasons.

Thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn, Mark Carney and Carla Bruni's sex life

I f it is true that most of the 60,000 people who joined the Labour Party last week did so to support Jeremy Corbyn in a leadership election, then the Labour Party is finished.

A supreme and magnificent exercise in people power

L ast week I mused that we were about to have the chance for a moment of greatness. Now we have seized it. It was a supreme, and magnificent, exercise in democracy by a people determined to follow their own decent instincts, and to distrust elites who had separated themselves...

The marvels of Milton���s back catalogue

A s with composers who write one work so popular that people never trouble to listen to anything else by them, or even to realise they wrote anything else (so what did Holst do besides The Planets, for example?) so it is with certain poets. One might imagine Gray lived...

The EU Empire is going to fail. On Thursday, we can protect Britain from the chaos of its death throes

B efore referendum campaigning paused following the tragic murder of Jo Cox , there was growing disbelief among leading Remainers the careerists, the big businessmen, the Bilderbergers, the Davos groupies and that tragic subset of my own trade that sees the journalists job as being to propitiate the governing...

The curious incident of the fox in my lifetime

O ur culture is not just about works of art: it is about how we live, our values and attitudes. They are what make our culture similar to those of other Western European countries with which we do not share a language, and so unlike that of America, with which...

The party leaders are Remain, but their core voters aren���t

T here will be political upheaval after June 23 whatever the result of the referendum. If we vote Leave, which I profoundly hope, the map will be torn up. Reputations will be broken and careers derailed. Do not underestimate how this would please millions of Britons, who find politicians largely...

Muddled thinking over Test championship only increases the danger ahead

E nglands crushing victories over Sri Lanka in the first two Tests remind us that international cricket especially of the five-day variety is always at its best when it is a serious contest. It was clear from so early on in both matches what the final result would...

Why are the Tories interfering in private education?

O ne man of utter integrity in the Conservative party is Lord Waldegrave, the former cabinet minister who is now Provost of Eton College. Sadly, the Tory party may not enjoy his services for much longer, for he has threatened to resign the whip in the Lords unless an outrageous...