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"They should pivot to the centre-right – announcing a bunch of sensible policies that pitch the Tories as a fiscally and socially conservative alternative to Labour's meek leadership. But Badenoch won’t do that. And here’s why." Sam Bright explains the Conservatives' mystifying strategy. (Clue: follow the money.)

Ruth Lucas reports on depressing but unsurprising new research findings: "Only 40 per cent of disadvantaged pupils identified as high-achieving at the start of secondary school go on to achieve top GCSE grades, compared with 62 per cent of their more affluent peers."

Patrik Hermansson and Harry Shukman take us inside The Sanctuary in Westminster, which offers financial support, free meeting rooms, podcast spaces and catered events to hard-right activists: "Furnished like a Pall Mall gentlemen's club, The Sanctuary has Chesterfield sofas, a taxidermied penguin, and a sketch of the Victorian colonialist Cecil Rhodes. Its bookshelves are decorated with Moët & Chandon champagne, a Fabergé egg, and maps of St Helena, the island on which Napoleon was exiled."

How many lives does God take in the Bible? Colin Marshall points us to a video that makes the total 2,599,499.

"The film succumbs to the constant temptation to map Liverpool’s changing face against your own. Davies’s childhood, like my father’s, was marked by the slum clearances, the first step in the seemingly endless process of regeneration and reification that continues to mar the city to this day." Lizzie Mackarel watches Terence Davies's 2008 film Of Time and the City.

Bill Bibliomane reviews When Last I Died by Gladys Mitchell: "There’s always something to like and appreciate in a Mrs. Bradley novel, but When Last I Died goes the longest way yet to building a taut, suspenseful, and gripping narrative, right up to the closing pages."

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"The proposals increase the number of directly elected executive mayors, whether local people want one or not. (West Yorkshire didn't, but got one anyway).  This system, borrowed from the US, places the emphasis on personalities rather than policies.  The personality may be  good at both publicity and policy (Andy Burnham?) or maybe just good at publicity (Boris Johnson.)  Government by councillors elected to implement policies may sound dull bit is likely to be more effective." Peter Wrigley is critical of Labour's plans for local government.

Alistair Carmichael says Labour's dissembling to win power was a gift to the Farages and Trumps of this world.

"At the very least, health-care privatisation has almost never had a positive effect on the quality of care. But outsourcing is not benign either, as it can reduce costs, but seems to do so at the expense of quality of care. Overall, our Review provides evidence challenging the justifications for health-care privatisation and concludes that the scientific support for further privatisation of health-care services is weak." A study by Benjamin Goodair and Aaron Reeves, published in The Lancet Public Health, suggests hospital privatisation is linked with worse patient care.

"As industrial, productive capitalism is abandoned and Britain embraces an economic model based on finance and rentierism rather than making things, graduates and non-graduates will soon end up working alongside one another in call centres, Amazon warehouses or hospitality." Dan Evans argues that its graduates without a future that politicians need to woo.

Gladys Mitchell, one of the major figures of the golden age of crime writing, was interviewed about her work and her favourite authors by B.A. Pike in 1976: "I find every book difficult to write, partly because, even if I make a plan, I seldom keep to it. Then I am apt to get new ideas as I go along, and this often necessitates a certain amount of rewriting."

"Eventually we got to New Mills where we had to pull the canoe out to get past the weir. The kestrel took the opportunity to hop out but then looked unsure what to do next. I encouraged it onto my paddle and then it jumped on to my arm and then flew across the water and perched on the railings. The whole thing was quite magical." Liam Calvert shares a canoe trip through Norwich with a hitch-hiking kestrel.

The Rising of the Moon by Gladys Mitchell

It is wrong to get too upset about a poor adaptation of Charles Dickens or Jane Austen. However bad it is, the novel is still there and you know there will be another one along in a minute. It is hard to be so calm about a poor adaptation of an obscure work that you particularly like, because you know that it is probably the only one you will ever see.

BBC4 is currently repeating the Mrs Bradley Mysteries, which were first shown in 1998 and 1999. These are adaptations of a few of the many crime novels by Gladys Mitchell (1901-83), and there is much to enjoy about them - notably the cast. Last week's Murder at the Opera featured not only the regulars Diana Rigg, Neil Dudgeon and Peter Davison, but also David Tennant and Roy Barraclough - Doctor Who to Les Dawson in one move.

I know Alex Wilcock is a fan of this series and he ought to write one of his appreciations about it.

This week's episode was less remarkable, though still enjoyable. But you would not have gathered from it a hint of what a remarkable book Rising of the Moon is or that it was set, not in some ill-defined Midsomer village, but in a carefully recreated Brentford, with its canals and weirs, where Mitchell herself grew up.

From my limited sampling of her work I know that Mitchell was a very uneven writer, but in The Rising of the Moon she created something like a British Ray Bradbury - a gothic coming-of-age story.

As an essay on a Gladys Mitchell fan site puts it:

She sets out to create a world filtered through the eyes of her thirteen-year old narrator, Simon Innes, and to that end she succeeds on every page. It's not just a perspective, it's an entire ideology that Miss Mitchell offers in her young protagonist. Simon and Keith have scruples; they are cunning and resourceful, in the best meaning of those words; they have their own particular code of honour. They also have a thorough understanding of how their world operates (parental laws; omissions which are not the same as lies), and Simon's subdued narrative prose bolsters this point ... 

The Rising of the Moon is filled with careful, believable details. Some readers may wish the narrator to stay away from such off-topic digressions, but in truth, the village murder investigation remains at the centre, which is where such exotic news would surely be placed in a village boy's world. Detailed observations on everyday life only serve to make this story more vivid. 

Another great touch: the inclusion of a complete circus poster, with all of its patter ("Crowned Heads Have Seen It. Unknown Multitudes Have Seen It. Come and See for Yourself the Riotous Fantasy of Sublime Terror and Beauty.") lovingly recreated. Such a poster, offering the unbelieveable claims of the circus, would be an unforgettable tract to a thirteen-year old boy. 

Miss Mitchell observes and offers these details with unerring consistency. Simon and Keith operate on their own young-adult logic, which does not always run parallel with that of their elders' (e.g. the boys decide it's best to fake evidence to establish Jack's innocence). However, such behaviour is always truthful to the character of the participants, and such insight is commendable in its author.

Yes, the book is still there. I hope this adaptation will encourage people to discover it rather than put them off.