The Joy of Six 1355

"It needs to restore its reputation for economic credibility, which means that it cannot deny the damage done by Brexit – and support measures to mitigate that damage by moving closer to the EU.  It should be willing to be very critical of Donald Trump.  And it needs to wholeheartedly make the case against Reform and Farage not on tactical grounds - 'vote Reform, get Labour' - but because it is a very bad idea to get Reform at all." David Gauke charts a path to recovery for the Conservatives, but doubts they will take it.

Simon Fletcher fears Keir Starmer's rightward shift is laying the ground for Nigel Farage: "It is the Government’s current direction that is the problem, not its rapidity. Further and faster down the wrong path is the height of political wrong-headedness. The repeated lesson of Labour governments - and indeed left of centre governments around the world - is that voters expect them to improve their living standards and when they do not, they withdraw their support."

James Hawes argues that we should not be surprised that AfD polls so well in eastern Germany. For reasons rooted in history, voters there have chosen authoritarian parties ever since they got the vote.

"As a chartered psychologist, I decided to read Spare to learn more about a topic that deeply interests me; the adverse childhood experiences of children from materially privileged homes. This topic is thoroughly addressed within the text. However, I didn’t predict that I would be left with such an aching sadness for Harry, his brother and his mother and to some extent his father; normal, flawed human beings trapped and tormented within a crumbling, cruelly dysfunctional gilded cage." Pam Jarvis reads Prince Harry's book.

Simon Matthews watches Ridley Scott's The Duellists from 1977.

"The helmet was made of iron covered with silver and gilt, consistent with early Imperial Roman cavalry helmet types found on the Continent. Over 1000 coins in the same pit provide a mid-1st century date, suggesting that the helmet was buried at the same time as the coins in the entranceway. The reason why the helmet was buried within a British shrine remains uncertain – it may have belonged to a Briton serving in the Roman army, or was possibly a diplomatic gift." The Hallaton Fieldwork Group on the discovery of an Iron Age shrine outside this Leicestershire village.