Society

In this week’s Books Podcast, we’re talking about William Empson, one of the most brilliant and captivatingly eccentric literary critics and poets of the twentieth century. Michael Wood, Emeritus Professor at Princeton and author of the new On Empson, joins me to discuss the strange life and mercurial thought of the man who first discerned Seven Types of Ambiguity. (Not to mention using rashers of bacon as bookmarks, travelling to Japan with nothing but a pair of tennis shoes and a lemon in his luggage, encouraging his wife’s infidelity, being sent down from Cambridge for owning condoms, and owning the strangest beard in the history of English letters…) You can listen to our conversation

If you’re looking for a balance transfer credit card deal, don’t be fooled into thinking you’ll save the most money by plumping for the card that comes with the longest interest-free period. Such cards usually charge a fee for switching your debt and can render the deal far less cost effective. The longest interest-free balance transfer period available at the time of writing is 42 months[1], as offered by both the MBNA Platinum 42 Month Balance Transfer Credit Card Visa and nuba Transfer Credit Card MasterCard. But these cards come with transfer fees of 2.79 and 3.29 per cent respectively. On a balance of £4,000, that would cost the cardholder

My taxi was about 90 seconds behind the murderers who struck on London Bridge last week. My wife and I saw their victims on the road. It made no sense until we stopped and got out. Then with horror we realised what we were witnessing. As everyone has already said, the emergency services’ response was flawless. A police 4×4 screeched up behind and two officers jumped out with submachine-guns. Within minutes, we learnt afterwards, the jihadis had been shot dead — but only after they had killed eight people, and injured scores more. Hundreds of others will have been on that bridge or in Borough Market. I suspect all of