The Week

Leading article

The Right Revd

It is a good job that the Crown Nominations Commission chooses its two favoured candidates for Archbishop of Canterbury in secret and without the pageantry involved when the cardinals choose a new Pope. Otherwise, there would be some extremely unhappy reporters stationed on a pavement somewhere, waiting in exasperation for a puff of white smoke.

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week | 3 October 2012

Home In a well-received 65-minute speech without notes to the party conference, Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, presented himself as a human being and concluded: ‘This is who I am. This is what I believe. This is my faith.’ Mr Miliband presented Labour as a One Nation party. He also said that if banks do

Diary

Diary – 3 October 2012

This week sees the 30th anniversary of the death (or ‘untimely death’, as death is now invariably known) of Glenn Gould. The fame of most classical musicians tends to wither when they die, but Gould’s seems to grow and grow: his grave is the most visited in Canada, he has appeared on The Simpsons, and not

Ancient and modern

Livy on wealth taxes

The ancient Greek example has already shown the Lib Dems how to enact the Mansion Tax. Now the Romans must step in to explain how to bring about the full-blown wealth tax they so ardently covet. The historian Livy says that an early king, Servius Tullius (traditional dates 578-534 BC), invented the idea of raising

Letters

Letters | 3 October 2012

On Israel and Iran Sir: Your leading article (‘Israel Alone’, 29 September) implies that there is consensus among Israelis that Iran must be attacked. This is far from the case. There is vigorous internal debate, with opposition MPs, a judge, and senior military and intelligence officials publicly denouncing Netanyahu’s calls for a strike. Padraic Rohan