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If you’re a fan of American billionaires buying up much-loved British institutions, then you, too, might be rejoicing at news that Larry Ellison has set his sights on purchasing much of Oxford. The squillionaire owner of the software technology company Oracle (net worth: $270 billion, or thereabouts) has started relatively small, however. In addition to spending a huge amount of money on the Ellison Institute of Technology in the city’s Science Park, he has also paid a supposed $10 million for one of its best-known and most-loved alehouses, the Eagle and Child, aka ‘the Bird and Baby’. The pub is bang in the centre of Oxford on St Giles and

David Bowie wrote a musical. Well, nearly. A cache of notes found in his New York apartment after his death indicates that he was planning a new theatre project in the final months of his life. The archive includes the phrase ‘18th cent musical’ among a collection of Post-it stickers filled with ideas and motifs. Creating a musical would have satisfied a lifelong ambition. ‘Right at the very beginning,’ he told the BBC in 2002, ‘I really wanted to write for the theatre. I could have just written for theatre in my living room but I think the intent was to have a pretty big audience.’ He seems to have

Studying our national character and current malaise has convinced me that the root cause of Britain’s problems is that we are too nice. Compared with our nearest European neighbours, let alone with most other countries in the world, being British automatically confers a series of characteristics not generally shared elsewhere. For a start we are polite. We do not shove ahead of other people in queues like the Italians, nor do we scream obscenities at random strangers in the street as they do in New York, and buying a cup of coffee is not regarded as a personal insult by cafés staff, as it is in Paris, for example. We

How was National Standing on Doorsteps Week for you? For most, it’s a case of grabbing a picture two or even three days after la rentrée, when you remember that you’ve missed the annual obligation to record the progress of what Mumsnetters call the ‘DCs’ (darling children). Assemble them by the front door, roar at the one who’s kicking off to SMILE and look at ME, lament that you failed to get your sons’ hair cut before they went back as overnight they’ve come to resemble Hamburg-era Beatles, press the button and then bundle them into the car. Later, you ping the picture around the family WhatsApp group and stick

It’s October 1994 and I’m rooting around in a garage in a non-descript LA neighbourhood, a few blocks from 20th Century Fox. The garage is piled high with clothes, cameras, audio tapes, reels of film and, in pride of place, a Nazi storm trooper helmet. This was the last resting place for a mountain of paraphernalia belonging to comedy legend Peter Sellers, who was born 100 years ago today. The house was owned by Sellers’s widow, Lynne Frederick, who had been found dead there just six months earlier. Now her mother lived there alone and was the keeper of the trove. After several G&Ts together, she agreed to allow me access.

In the next couple of weeks, hundreds of thousands of young people will be heading off to university. They’ll be bracing themselves for the wholesale regret that freshers’ week will undoubtedly precipitate, and possibly contemplating attending a lecture or two. But among their number there will be some who got nothing like the requisite grades advertised on university websites, because clearing has radically changed the application landscape. Clearing shares certain features with the Grand National: tensions run high and chaos reigns as the starting gun sounds, and competitors jostle for position; a frenzied race ensues, and invariably there are a few casualties along the way. But increasingly, these casualties are