Society

Among the millions of words which will be expended over the next four years on the first world war, very few will be devoted to explaining one of its greatest legacies of all, the effects of which continue to dominate our politics to this day. One of the best-kept secrets of the European Union is that the core idea which gave rise to it owed its genesis not to the second world war, as is generally supposed, but to the Great War a quarter of a century earlier. It was around that time that the man who can be described as ‘the Father of Europe’ was first inspired to the

For non-Catholics, the most luridly fascinating aspect of Catholicism is confession. Telling your inmost sins — and we know what they are — to a male cleric, eh? In a darkened booth. How medieval is that? Well, the fantasies that people who never go to confession nurse about it are about to be shored up by a new book on the subject by the Catholic author John Cornwell. It’s called The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession. On the cover is a scary-looking picture of a confessional — not somewhere you’d take the children, frankly, but right at home in a Hitchcock movie. John Cornwell is a friend, and

Daniel Johnson, the distinguished editor of Standpoint magazine, can be bracketed with Tim Congdon and Dominic Lawson, as having had the potential to become a chess master. All three chose other courses in economics, journalism and politics. Daniel, in particular, has faced world-class opposition in simultaneous displays, having drawn with Garry Kasparov and defeated the Czech grandmaster Ludek Pachman.   The game I have chosen to illustrate his chessboard skill was played in a curious match between Academics and Philistines, where Daniel demolished Steve Davis, the six-time winner of the snooker world championship.   Davis-Johnson: London 1997; Giuoco Piano   1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Bc5 4 0-0 Nf6 5 d3