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Oxford and Cambridge have released figures showing how many offers they gave to pupils from schools in the 2020 UCAS application cycle. We have combined the figures in this table. It shows how well state grammars and sixth-form colleges compete with independent schools. Over the years, both universities have roughly doubled the proportion of pupils from state schools: 67 per cent, up from 52 per cent in 2000. Of the 80 schools, 35 are independent, 22 grammar, 15 sixth-form colleges, seven comprehensives or academies, and one is a further education college. (Schools are ranked by offers received, then by offer-to-application ratio. If schools received fewer than three offers from one

Hedgerows are one of those things that most of us simply take for granted. Drive, walk, cycle or ride through the English countryside and you’re likely to see fields bounded by hedges, which change with the seasons. Blossoming in the spring, full of colour and berries in the autumn, and sprouting wildly thorugh the summer months. They are certainly having their moment in the sun. In the 1980s, farmers were encouraged under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy to grub them up (dig them up, in laymen’s speak) in a bid to create larger fields, and grow more food. 23 per cent of the nation’s hedgerows were lost in that decade.

Here’s a question for you: if you were lucky enough to own a swimming pool or a tennis court – or indeed both – would you want to rent it out per hour to the hoi polloi, the great unwashed, the General Public? Although I am not in the happy position of being able to answer this question personally, I would have thought the answer would be a hard no. No to other people’s verucas, no to other people’s splashing and cavorting in earshot, and absolutely no to other people’s children bombing into your pool all day long. I concede that tennis might be a different matter. A quick set

I once read that after watching a James Bond film men speed in their Honda Civics: they might do 35 mph in a built-up area. If this is so, it is due to the Aston Martin Bond has driven since 1964 (the DB5 in Goldfinger, a man with ‘a cold finger’). The DB5 has appeared in six Bond films so far; and some kind of Aston Martin has appeared in twelve Bond films. Is it, I wonder, contemplating Bond’s internal wasteland of sex addiction, murder and laundry, the only real home he ever had? Is it his wife? When the DB5 was revealed in Skyfall, waiting calmly in a garage, it

BBC Director General Tim Davie, in his proclaimed push to create ‘landmark’ TV shows appears to be steering the Corporation in an increasingly conservative (small ‘c’) direction, intent on trading off past glories. Former soft drink marketer Davie’s lack of programming and editorial experience is often painfully apparent; he is increasingly given to sweeping crowd-pleasing statements, such as the remarks he made to the public about BBC’s staff’s attendance of Pride marches, telling staff to stop virtue-signalling on social media. Despite having spent 16 years in various senior roles at the Corporation, Davie doesn’t appear to have the antennae to pick up on the mood of his workforce. He may well believe upsetting the

Among the glorious shores of these islands, there is one of the best-kept secrets of sailing. It’s a ragged and rocky coastline that is blessed with the sort of idyllic, empty sandy beaches stretching on for miles that would make Tom Hanks’s castaway shake from method acting-induced PTSD. Here the blue waters are scattered with islands rising from the depths with the kind of muscular topography that would have your average geography teacher reaching for their colouring-in pencils. This, my friends, is the west coast of Scotland. Forget the Caribbean, wonderful though the punch, the people and the terribly reliable temperature all are. The untouched beaches of the Western Isles are

News that the gourmet dog food company Butternut Box has raised forty million pounds to expand its services in the wake of the pandemic puppy boom will surprise no one. More dogs means more chum, after all. But this isn’t just any old chum. This is gourmet dog food, the like of which you may not even sup on yourself. Founded by two former Goldman bankers, Butternut Box promises to deliver a balanced meal of chicken, turkey, fish, or lamb with vegetables to your dog, perfectly tailored to weight and calorie intake. David Nolan and Kevin Glynn who form the savvy former banking duo, even promise that someone will taste

Of all the things sacrificed to public health in the last eighteen months, I think the one I regret the least is the default poolside Summer holiday. I first began to understand something about it, and the counter intuitive aspects of human happiness, on holiday in Cozumel, off the coast of Mexico, in 1999. I was staying at an all-inclusive hotel, not the sort of thing I would normally have done, being more of a self-identified ‘traveller’ at the time, happier with ad-hoc hostels and thumbing from town to town. I immediately resented the little coloured wristband that alerted the staff to the level of service and the range of