Six of the Best 186

As Liam Fox exults in Britain's role as a major arms exporter, Obliged to Offend looks at the contradictions of David Cameron's foreign policy.

Brain Pickings directs us to two films on democracy and despotism made by Encyclopedia Britannica immediately after World War II.

Richard Littlejohn recently claimed that the Great Train Robbery was "like a military operation, carried out with immense precision and chutzpah". Zelo Street demonstrates that this is nonsense: "the sheer amateurishness of the heist is the stuff of legend".

"The fact that they're cute is a decided advantage, and farmers are being encouraged to make provision for them, leaving grass margins around fields, allowing the vegetation around ponds and rivers to grow a bit taller, that sort of thing." The View from Creeting St Peter on the appeal and prospects of the harvest mouse.

Blue Tinted considers the enigmatic relationship between Chelsea and Vitesse Arnhem.

"'The Knights Templar were warriors,' Teabing reminded, the sound of his aluminum crutches echoing in this reverberant space." The Daily Telegraph selects the 20 clumsiest sentences in the Dan Brown oeuvre.