“... rhetoric. I am not trying to underplay the practical, political and economic disasters that may face us, from what on earth will happen on the Irish border to where the Welsh farmers will sell their sheep. But we do need to attend also to the cheap, fruitless, repetitive and wordy stand-off we have descended to.On the one hand, there are those whose ...”

“... The first​ big leader to livestream a message to the virtual World Health Assembly on 18 May was supposed to be Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa and chairman of the African Union, but something went wrong with the feed. Xi Jinping went first instead. We saw the president of China seated behind a highly polished table, in front of a mural showing rosy dawn creeping over the Great Wall ...”

“... Having had mothers and fathers and the usual miserable battering of the sense of self by life may arouse the emotional pulsations of a story or a poem; but feeling is not sufficient for the essay. Comparisons roam about it, familiarity with those who have ploughed the field before … Tact and appropriateness play a part. How often we read a beginner’s ...”

“... agitate for unification, Wales explores its relationship with England, Labour faces a split that may lead some of the party to an explicit embrace of extra-parliamentary politics, and Farage stirs the pot, the situation is unlikely to resolve itself any time soon. This has the makings of a full-blown constitutional crisis that the Conservative Party, no ...”