Andrew Gimson is contributing editor at Conservative Home.
Polly Toynbee describes herself as ‘profoundly anti-religious’, but she had the energy and curiosity to accept an ingenious challenge from a group of Christians. Church Action on Poverty wanted her to spend Lent trying to live on the minimum wage of £4.10 an hour. She duly moved out of her comfortable house and into a
Would you like ‘a framed 16 x 20 inch nude portrait’ of yourself? The picture would be ‘in black and white or tinted blue’ and would be taken ‘in the privacy of your own home (with a chaperone in attendance)’ by a photographer who would bring a ‘portable studio’ with him. One of his nude
At a time when even the Labour party panders to the rich and to the middle classes, it is a pleasure to talk to a genuine socialist. Jack Jones, who will be 90 in March and was one of the most powerful men in Britain when he led the Transport & General Workers’ Union in
To watch Tony Blair at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on Monday night was to be reminded that nobody is better at delivering a certain kind of speech. The actual language is unremarkable, and so is the delivery, and so are the jokes. We do not feel ourselves to be in the presence of Demosthenes, or
The manner in which Iain Duncan Smith turned and faced his tormentors on Tuesday was reminiscent of the bravery shown by Prang, a bull terrier kept by his father while serving in India with the RAF after the second world war. The Conservative leader recently related how his father saw Prang deal with the danger
Elisabeth Furse, who died on Monday at the age of 92, was one of the most amazing hostesses London has known. One could not say she had a ‘salon’, for the word carries connotations of politeness and self-restraint which were entirely foreign to her. When I first descended the fire-escape-style steps to her basement flat
Hackney, E8 Murals are unfashionable, and peace murals commissioned by loony-left councillors at the height of their self-indulgent assault on the Thatcher government are perhaps most unfashionable of all. Yet the Hackney Peace Carnival Mural in London, created between 1983 and 1985 and now threatened with demolition, really ought to be saved. It is a
Berlin Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was sober on Sunday night and drunk on Monday morning, and both conditions were entirely justified. When the polling booths closed and the first exit polls were published on German television at 6 p.m. on Sunday, the rival camps were so close that either of them might have ended up with
Pessimism among Conservative candidates, extending to anguished doubt about their deficiencies as public speakers and their general ability to stay the course, is nothing new. As Chips Channon asked himself in his diary for 20 February 1934: Am I wise to embrace a Parliamentary career – can I face the continued strain? James Willoughby told