Society

City dwellers across Europe will have noticed an ominous and growing presence on our streets, nudging cyclists onto pavements, looming over pedestrians crossing the road, and generally spoiling the view. It is gratifying to learn that we are neither going mad nor shrinking in the wash: cars really are becoming huge. The bonnets of newly-sold cars across Europe now average 83.8cm in height, up from 76.9cm in 2010 – coincidentally the perfect height for caving in a toddler’s head. That’s according to a new report from Transport & Environment (T&E), an advocacy group for clean transport and energy that is campaigning against what it calls ‘carspreading’. A resident of Zone

Do you remember long division? I do, vaguely – I certainly remember mastering it at school: that weird little maths shelter you built, with numbers cowering inside like fairytale children, and a wolf-number at the door, trying to eat them (I had quite a vivid imagination as a child). Then came the carnage as the wolf got in – but also a sweet satisfaction at the end. The answer! You’d completed the task with nothing but your brain, a pen, and a scrap of paper. You’d thought your way through it. You’d done something, mentally. You were a clever boy. I suspect 80 to 90 per cent of universities will

‘Same old boring Sunday morning, old men out, washing their cars.’ So begins the punk anthem ‘The Sound of the Suburbs’ by the Members. There are plenty of cars being washed (and waxed) on my road on any Sunday morning and the strimmers are buzzing, despite this being peak breeding season for insects. But here’s the thing. We live in deepest north Norfolk, not the achingly suburban Surrey town of Camberley that so provoked punk angst. When we bolted from south London after the lockdowns, our checklist included no streetlights, motorways (the nearest is 98 miles away), new-builds or nearby neighbours. To secure the rambling farmhouse we wanted, we had

Bad lads Sir: The articles on Britain’s relationship with porn were fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. Fascinating in that Louise Perry and Michael Simmons’s contributions (‘Devices and desires’ and ‘Dirty money’, 14 June) provided a thought-provoking analysis of the extraordinary growth of the industry. Frustrating in the juxtaposition of these pieces with Sean Thomas’s delusional thoughts about ‘lads’ mags’ (‘Age of innocence’). Mr Thomas seems to recall these publications with the same dewy-eyed fondness that folk of my generation reserve for Spangles and Bagpuss. He is unable to see the direct line that joins them to the worst excesses of OnlyFans. It’s all there in both – the same

‘But will anyone be interested?’ the vicar asked cautiously. It was a fair response to my latest madcap scheme. One of the vicar’s 12 churches, St Candida and Holy Cross at Whitchurch Canonicorum in Dorset, hosts one of the country’s only three remaining pre-Reformation saints’ shrines with the relics of the saint still present. In this case, the shrine is to St Wite, a ninth-century virgin princess martyred by the Vikings. Her saint’s day was coming up. Could we, I asked, recreate a pre-Reformation church service in honour of it? The vicar, the Revd Virginia Luckett, who is sometimes heard on Radio 4, agreed to my proposal – but with