The Joy of Six 1281

"The adversarial trial system has been shown inadequate to deal with complex, and indeed developing, scientific data in Lucy Letby's trials. Procedure has triumphed over the serious search for the truth. Yet there is also the question as to whether existing legal procedures were followed over testing expert witnesses." Timothy Bradshaw claims that Lucy Letby has been betrayed by a legal system that can’t handle scientific evidence.

Ian Martin is not impressed by Boris Johnson's Unleashed: "On the basis of this magnum opus, satirists who’d pointed their lances at some imaginary political giant were in fact tilting at a windbag."

Jamie Stone, who has served at both Holyrood and Westminster, compares the two parliaments: "Having been a Member since its inception in 1999, I happen to know that when they were being trained, the staff were instructed to address the newly elected MSP’s as Mr, Mrs, Ms and so forth… but never by their first name. I also happen to know that this training fell on deaf ears from the very start. I was Jamie on day one, and still am today. I must admit that’s how I’ve always preferred it."

The organisation that became the RSPB was started by Victorian women protesting against the use of feather in millinery, shows Tessa Boase.

"The Lansbury Exhibition of Architecture would show how town planning and scientific building principles would provide a better environment in which to live and work, and how this would be applied to the redevelopment of London and the new towns planned across the country." A London Inheritance finds much of this 1951 event still standing in the East End.

Xan Brooks gives his choice of the best fiction set in the American South.