Six of the Best 963

Jonathan Chait offers a way of understanding Donald Trump: "He is a brilliant con man, who has, throughout his career in business and politics alike, honed the singular skill of identifying marks and exploiting them with spectacular lies."

"Senator Bankhead, the uncle of Tallulah, managed to get a bill drafted in Congress which would have authorised $1 billion of stamp scrip to be issued the following year." David Boyle girds up to make the case for local money again.

Jessica Grose says that though devices for tracking children calm parents' fears, they hamper the children's development.

"'Sport confirmed that in England, you could do as you pleased,' he writes, and to this end he takes us on a dizzying journey from the bull-runners of Stamford to the public school cricketers of ­Uppingham, from the militaristic pomp of the fox hunt to the bloodied bare-knuckle heroes of the prize-fighting ring, from the Peterloo ­massacre of 1819 to the stirrings of modern football." Jonathan Liew reviews This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England, 1760-1960 by Robert Colls, who taught me on my Master's course at Leicester many years ago.

Adrian York celebrates Kate Bush's election to fellowship of the Ivors Academy, the independent professional association UK for music creators.

Will Carr looks at Anthony Burgess as a Mancunian.