Inigo Thomas

The BBC has released some papers relating to the hiring and the employment of Guy Burgess. One of the more amusing details is Burgess’s habit of writing memos on the back of the expense forms; another, his fondness for first-class travel and his justifications for it: If you will refer to your papers you will see that in the past I successfully established the principle of travelling first class when at work, under war-time conditions, on Corporation business. I think you will find this on your predecessor's minutes.

Think of a book. Then imagine someone other than the author who might – or could never – have written it.

Cricket bats were once distinguished only by the makers' names; now they sound like tools superheroes might use in computer games or cartoons. These are some of the names given to bats by the leading manufacturers: Beast, Fiery Beast, Angry Beast, Wild Beast, Blade Runner, Blade Strike, Ice Sub 10, Big Kahuna, Biggest Kahuna, Kahuna Chaos, Kahuna Carnage, Kahuna Twins, Kahuna Mayhem, Catalyst, Hero, Icon, Purist, Blazer, Genius, Wizard, B52, Navarone, Samurai, Uzi, Zeus, Air Blade, Don, V389, Hard Drive, Alpha, Beta, Mega Bit, Satellite, Fusion, Ignite, Nitro, Powerbow, Predator, Viper, Xiphos. Xiphos is the ancient Greek word for a single-hand double-edged sword. Cricket bats are held with both hands, and have a single face.

'I see God's hand all over this place,' Sarah Palin says of Alaska in an interview with Runners World. The former mayor, former vice-presidential candidate, now former governor, is much absorbed by running, and it's on a run that she knows profund thoughts.

In an interview with Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tony Blair told an audience packed with eastern seaboard celebrities how he is writing his memoirs. 'Instead of doing this as "I met such and such five world leaders on such and such a day and they said such and such,"’ he explained, 'I'm writing it more as, if you like, a personal journey.