The Education Secretary almost managed to make his climbdown on the EBC look like part of a bigger masterplan. Almost, but not quite

Why do assume that as long as teenagers live with their parents, they have no civic responsibilities? We adults are more confused about this than our children

Living in Hope and History: notes from our century

SACRED COWS: IS FEMINISM RELEVANT TO THE NEW MILLENNIUM?

Melissa Benn finds that the eternal feminist has cut loose from despair and set sail for Utopia

MOTHERHOOD IS a theme that has, unsurprisingly, been tackled by some of the great feminists of the post- Enlightenment era. Several of these writers, such as Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer, have written about the topic without being mothers themselves. This has lent their arguments an appealing sweep and didacticism but it has also placed more emphasis on rationality and free will than many mothers feel themselves to possess in real life.

Thirty years into feminism, and guess who's still doing the housework? Melissa Benn throws down her duster

Melissa Benn acclaims a narrative of one girl's search for the language that defeats despair

Rare is the book that you really cannot put down, the one that seems as necessary, poignant, impossible and joyful as life. This short work of memory and desire by one of Ireland's most prominent columnists is one of them.

Melissa Benn welcomes a moving first novel from a veteran political thinker; When Memory Dies by A Sivanandan, Arcadia, pounds 9.99