English is shot through with the Bard's words and phrases, but what of his harder plays, and the work of his successors?

Withholding trade does work on intransigent regimes, and now it could force President Assad to back down in Syria

This Easter, all Anglican eyes will be on the outspoken Archbishop of York in a year when he could reach the pinnacle of his denomination

Raising the price of cheap alcohol fails to address the most alarming rise in problem drinking – among the middle classes

Rupert Murdoch's luck may be running out, judging by a conversation I had with a group of British and US corporate lawyers. Across the Pond they see Murdoch's newspaper empire unravelling like a fraying sleeve. It seems that whatever wily move the Dirty Digger makes to salvage his position at his scandal-hit British papers, a new revelation pops up to deepen the crisis.

Chris Killip and I are looking at the same photographs. But we are seeing different things. They are dense, vivid, solid, black-and-white images of working people in the North of England in the Seventies and Eighties. To me they speak of a grim, bleak, alienated breed – unsmiling, ground-down, resigned or even perhaps crushed and defeated. To him they celebrate the resilience of the human spirit.