Simon Heffer's Blog, page 4

Project 70: will Prince Charles be on the throne by next year?

N ext Sunday, the Prince of Wales will lay the wreath on behalf of the nation at the Cenotaph. It won���t be the first time: he performed this duty when the Queen was in Kenya in 1983. However, significantly, it will be the first time he has laid the wreath...

What did the Victorians ever do for us? Victorious Century, David Cannadine, review

D avid Cannadine observes that it has ���become fashionable��� to denounce Victorian England ���for being (among other things) sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, classist and imperialist���. And yet, he observes, ���much of what seems to us as [sic] arrogance, intolerance and bigotry was often born of fear and ignorance, and of...

There are far better ways of shrinking the House of Lords than term limits

A report by the Lord Speaker���s Committee is expected this week to recommend the means of reducing the size of the House of Lords . More than 800 peers are eligible to sit there, at a considerable expense to the taxpayer that does not reflect their constitutional necessity. One proposal...

Alastair Campbell's eyewitness account of the Blair-Brown power struggle is painfully banal

T he sixth volume of Alastair Campbell ���s diaries begins after the 2005 General Election, the last of Tony Blair���s victories and, indeed, the last Labour won at all. Campbell was no longer on Blair���s payroll, but during the two years these diaries cover ��� years dominated by Gordon Brown...

Ben Stokes debacle was entirely avoidable - England management is too permissive

O ne could be forgiven, when the England touring party to visit Australia was named last Wednesday, for thinking the pessimism was being a little overdone. The view was not just that the party is weak; but that it is weaker than most we have sent Down Under.

Time for a full-throated Tory defence of enterprise and capitalism

I t took Jeremy Corbyn���s affirmation of Bolshevist economics to provoke it, but it is uplifting to see the Conservative party renewing its vows to capitalism and liberal economics.

General Lord Richards: Why I'm certain North Korea won't start a war

I n one of London���s grandest military clubs, its walls hung with portraits of moustachioed generals and field marshals evoking an age when Britain���s Armed Forces were perhaps the finest in the world, General Lord Richards and I discuss how well the country is defended today. Despite David Richards���s measured...

The incompetent tyranny of local government is a serious cause for concern

A s we drive along miles of pot-holed roads this weekend, the boots of our cars crammed with fetid rubbish, engaging in that now traditional leisure activity of visiting the municipal dump, we might be forgiven for wondering what the point of local government is these days. For years, the...

From embezzlers to bail-outs, the chequered history of the Bank of England is a rip-roaring tale

A n 880-page history of a central bank might seem an unappetising prospect for the general reader, which makes it a triumph that David Kynaston���s Till Time���s Last Sand, a portrait of the Bank of England , really is fascinating, and at times even gripping.

Stunning West Indies and Bangladesh wins are a lesson to the ICC on what can be achieved

T he Leeds Test merits all the favourable adjectives showered upon it. It was a magnificent advertisement not just for Tests, but for first-class cricket. It is a rare game, these days, that goes for five days with relatively little interruption for bad weather; a rarer one still that sees...