The 1.3 acres of roof have been releaded, the Cascade House repaired, the sixth Duke’s brocade in the Yellow Dining Room rewoven, the Victoria Regia flowers again. The grounds are full of people, who do not guess how much of what they see is due to nature, how much to art.All this has put [...]

His father worried about this, as about his occasional flutters on and off the Turf. The footmen still wore full livery (lemon coat, dark blue breeches and white stocking) if there were more than six to dinner.It was 1938 when his grandfather died, aged 69. Devonshire House in London had gone, pulled down to [...]

Donald Rumsfeld will announce that having looked into the matter, it turns out that for propaganda purposes, the Iraqis have set up a self-electrocution torture chamber in a photo booth in Woolworths
More from Mark Steel. Maybe that was part of the thinking behind killing hundreds of civilians in Fallujah. They saw they were 3 [...]

Monitoring these pupils’ performance is what is needed.So, the PM’s speech contained no eye-catching new initiative, but maybe we should not be too critical. What is needed now is a period of stability while reforms are bedded down. But there is no need for talks: the Government has already instructed local education authorities to [...]

It was a slow process, but now you could probably plonk me – never mind my statue – naked on the fourth plinth and I’d sit there quite happily. It was a chance for me to show that I’m actually a very skilled parent. I agreed to take part in the series before Parys [...]

An illuminating light has been shed on institutions that are not used to critical scrutiny. Currently it is Our Boys in Iraq who are subject to critical questions. Normally in Britain, wars are associated with a severe clamp-down on information made available to the public. When a conflict erupts, institutions that operate in the [...]