Long before student activists started talking about pulling down statues of Cecil Rhodes, a cultural war was being waged in America over monuments honouring General Robert E. Lee and other leaders of the Confederacy. In 2001 there was a petition to remove some of these statues from the University of Texas on the grounds that
Home Regulated rail fares will rise by 3.6 per cent in January, bringing the price of annual tickets from Oxford, Colchester or Hastings to more than £5,000. The rise depended on the annual rate of inflation in July as measured by the Retail Prices Index, which had risen to 3.6 per cent; as measured by the
To the Business School at the University of Edinburgh to be interviewed on the theme of ‘Great Political Disasters’. Main criteria for inclusion: decisions, often taken for short-term reasons, whose unforeseen consequences have echoed down the ages. Everyone will have their own little list, but mine included the Balfour declaration, Partition, Suez, Wilson’s failure to
Big bong theory Big Ben, otherwise known as the Great Bell, is due to fall silent on Monday for renovations to be carried out on the Palace of Westminster’s Elizabeth Tower, in which it is housed. Why is it called Big Ben? —According to one version, Sir Benjamin Hall, who oversaw the installation of the
The education gap Sir: It is disappointing that Toby Young (‘Parents, not schools, are key to the knowledge gap’, 5 August) conforms to the ‘Close the gap’ mentality that obsesses Ofsted and leftish thinking in state schools. Young deplores ‘the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged 16-year-olds in England’. I prefer to get away from
