True popular art drives up from the streets, but the commercial world wastes no time in cashing in

As our passion for Alan Partridge suggests, Seventies chic is everywhere. But you have to go back much further to find a time when enemies of the state ruled the roost

Those awkward photographs in unlikely outfits can reveal more than maybe we realise

The contrast between two just-published books on and by Isaiah Berlin exposes the sad decline in the quality of informed public debate in our debased times

The Stones have become their own tribute band, and the reverence with which they are treated is more about nostalgia than music. Time to change the record

It was goodbye to post-war austerity in the Fifties, as shopping malls and skyscrapers arrived – and 'The Billy Cotton Band Show' made way for Elvis

The Government's sudden desire to make new rules and enforce old ones is overdue. Plus, ghastly kids, and the death of plain speaking

Forget the Dutch model, we like our royals remote. Plus: why private schools do better, and missing the point of fiction

The great chronicler of East Anglian life returns to an era of hope and harmony