Six of the Best 932

"On 25 April 2020, The Spectator, located in London’s Old Queen Street, just around the corner from CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) in Matthew Parker Street carried a column by its commissioning editor, one Mary Wakefield, wife of Dominic Cummings. In it, she told the touching story of her family’s brush with the deadly coronavirus – save for one now-glaring omission: not even the slightest hint of their now infamous mercy-dash to the North East." Tim Bale examines Cummings, Covid-19 and the British Establishment.

Calum Macleod argues that land reform is central to a green economic recovery in Scotland.

Richard Bentall points out that the effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy has never been proved in a randomised controlled trial.

"Bentham ... argued that consensual sex between men should be decriminalised, on the grounds that the law should only prohibit and punish practices that caused harm overall (and not always then), but that there was no harm in consensual sexual activity. " Philip Schofield (no, not that one) looks at the work of Jeremy Bentham, the 18th-century republican, radical, feminist and gay rights advocate.

Virginia Morell says urban foxes may be domesticating themselves all around us.

"There is no room even for the little box adverts that sometimes provided an inadvertent commentary on the text, such as one offering to cure your inferiority complex next to England’s record against Australia." Backwatersman on the evolution and pleasures of the Playfair Cricket Annual.