In such circumstances, when protest turns to obstruction it is a matter that should worry all of us, not just Special Branch. It is from such roots that the violence of intolerance has always grown as minorities feel oppressed. But, in democracies, m...

Just how is the Secretary of State to define the "popular schools" to hand out one-off cash sweeteners to in the hope they will opt out? Will it be the number of middle-class parents applying; the distance people are prepared to send their children t...

All Western media networks have insurance schemes to cover the costs of injuries or fatalities sustained by correspondents. Managers, moreover, warn their staff in the field not to take "unnecessary" risks: "no story is worth a dead correspondent" is...

The Queen's Christmas message to the Commonwealth is the only speech she writes and reads herself and there are more reasons for retaining it than there are for withdrawing it. Many elderly people who love their monarch would feel impoverished by its...

On arriving at Auckland, he was given leave to assist Bishop Selwyn (who was sympathetic to the Maori claims) in ministering to the troops. Payne served with the Naval Brigade, sharing the solders' dangers and discomforts and, in due course, was awar...

The claim is startling enough to merit consideration. Over the last 15 years, communism has collapsed the world over, most developing countries have abandoned their policies of state-led industrialisation, a global economy has re-emerged for the firs...

The examples she used were fairly mild in comparison to the great damage often caused by the triangular situation set up by a therapist, the client and the client's partner - where the partner is excluded from a very intimate and exclusive relationsh...

There was more ambivalence from those who felt that the process of justice had been subverted. The dead man's solicitor professed himself surprised "that a tragic event of this nature could occur involving a high-profile remand prisoner on a supervis...

As for places which Ms Lambert could not find celebrated by poets, Swinburne hailed Bath as "England's Florence" and Southey remarked (admittedly in prose) that: "Probably in no other age or country was there ever such an astonishing display of human...

It is undeniable that Russia had a case for ending the anarchic rebellion of the Chechen leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev. The defence of territorial integrity is a principle that all states have an interest in upholding. No Western country and no neighbour ...

And then, to make the morning complete, I spent all I had left in one of London's best vegetarian restaurants, where the clientele eat to the beat of Horace Silver, Art Blakey and Clifford Brown. In short, London was bursting with jazz music - which ...

The essays of liturgists and of historians at the time and the minutes of meetings where the new liturgies were drafted are heavy with scholarship. To take but one example, the eucharistic prayers were researched in minute detail and from that resear...

I have nothing but admiration for the courage of those who put themselves - not others - at considerable risk, to achieve what we more timid politicians have failed to do: to get the Government to begin to think against about its transport policy. Wo...

In the wake of the Kilbrandon Royal Commission, the 1974 Labour government, with a wafer-thin majority over the Conservatives in the February election and a notable upsurge in Scottish National Party numbers at Westminster, committed itself to devolv...

However, Chechnya did exercise this right in 1991 but no country in the world, including Muslim nations, was prepared to recognise its sovereignty and independence. It is not difficult to see why Chechnya failed to win its rightful place among the co...

First, the UK Council for Psychotherapy, while a large organisation, does not represent senior established analytical psychotherapy organisations such as the British Pyscho-Analytical Society. These are represented by the British Confederation of Psy...

The cover of this anthology pictures two sobbing, scruffy, 17th-century schoolchildren. The ugly fear on their faces contrasts with more appealing depictions of infant sorrow, often signalled by the presence of one tear suspended on thick eyelashes, ...

Our story starts in the early Sixties. Harold Wilson regarded public schools as an impediment to the kind of classless society that would exploit the white heat of technology for the common good. In its 1964 manifesto, Labour promised to "set up an e...

Tim McGirk tries to implicate the late president Ziaur Rahman in the death of our first prime minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, which is mischievous when dealing with events which are painfully sensitive for many millions of people. Mr McGirk exaggera...