No one who watched the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on Monday could fail to be moved by the sense of occasion, the precision with which everything was carried out and the genuine grief of so many, from the relatives and friends of the Royal Family to those who lined the streets of London and Windso...

Good afternoon, everyone.

As regular readers will know, a few years ago I saw John Lloyd, the radio and television producer, give a talk at a conference.  One of his best known projects is QI, the long-running television series that enlightens us week after week with unusual facts and information about our world...

We all like a good vote, as we have seen again this week, and we all like a Top Ten that we can agree with or disagree with as we choose.  Back in 2005, when the world must have seemed a simpler and rather better place, the Today Programme on Radio 4 held a poll for listeners to decide on their...

The word ‘canon’ in this week’s title is not a misprint for ‘cannon’, thereby creating a question about who is selecting which late-medieval siege weapon to destroy the castle, nor does it refer to the Japanese multinational company that specialises in optical, imaging...

  Battlefields Tour – Sunday 3rd April If you want to read a proper trilogy about the First World War, I can wholeheartedly recommend the books of Pat Barker – Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road – which are very well researched and engagingly written...