Society

The clock’s ticking to shield your savings and investments from the taxman for the 2016/17 tax year, which ends on Wednesday 5 April. But if you’re quick, there’s still time to to take advantage of tax relief that could save you thousands of pounds. Here’s a reminder of the key allowances to make the most of before they disappear – and what the experts have to say about them. Pensions ‘You should look to maximise your pension contributions before the end of the tax year,’ says Patrick Connolly, a certified financial planner at Chase de Vere. ‘Pension contributions benefit from initial tax relief at somebody’s marginal rate of income tax.

In this week’s Books Podcast I talk to Erica Benner about her new Life of Machiavelli, Be Like The Fox. Professor Benner, a Yale expert in political science, offers a new and intriguing reading of the great theorist of statecraft — arguing that in the violent and unstable Florence of his time, he learned to conceal his real meanings in layers of irony and satire. We ask, in essence, just how Machiavellian Machiavelli really was…. You can listen to our conversation here: And if you enjoyed that, please subscribe on iTunes for a new episode every Thursday.

The civil war in Syria, and the resulting displacement of half the population, has been the tragedy of our times. We cannot turn our backs on the ten million people who have been forced to flee their homes. Every decent society knows this and knows that it’s our moral duty to come up with a workable way of helping the refugees. But while the scale of the displacement is substantial, it is not unmanageable. The 21st century should be capable of dealing with such catastrophes and we must prepare ourselves actually to do so. To rise to the challenge, we need to combine the instinctive compassion that mass suffering arouses

I never met Martin McGuinness, but I was certainly affected by him from an early age. His decisions, and those of his colleagues on the IRA Army Council, indelibly coloured my childhood. Belfast in the 1970s and ’80s was a grey, fortified city, compelling in many ways, but permanently charged with the unpredictable electricity of violence. Our local news steadily chronicled the shattering of families, in city streets and down winding border lanes that were full of birdsong before the bullets rang out. There were regular, respectful interviews with pallid widows and dazed widowers, and funerals attended by red-eyed, snuffling children tugged into stiff, smart clothes to pay formal respects