The personnel changes announced by a desperate President on Saturday – the head of intelligence to become Vice-President and the former head of the Air Force to become Prime Minister – paved the way, along with the existing state of emergency, for th...

We have also heard much from aggrieved parties: the hacked, or those who believe they may have been hacked. That list has latterly been augmented by a succession of individuals from the Labour Party. Scarcely had it been reported that Gordon Brown ha...

Ms Brady's name featured in the original off-mic repartee ("The game's gone mad. Did you hear charming Karren Brady this morning complaining about sexism? Do me a favour, love," etc). She later returned to exclaim over fresh evidence of the sinister ...

But it was not only his mis-step that could have turned out so much worse. When they first saw him beneath three high craggy outcrops, the helicopter crew sent to rescue him assumed it must be the wrong man, and flew back to the summit. Had they not ...

It would be easy to mock. Many did when a host of celebrities – from Tracey Emin and Annie Lennox to Julian Barnes and the Archbishop of Canterbury – wrote an open letter decrying the Government's plan to sell off woodland owned by the Forestry Commi...

Years later we met, and inevitably he tried to have his way with me – in Ealing rather than the woods, which was one of the many wrong notes that made me run away. Within days I received his letter: "It's sunny outside," wrote this supposed poet, "bu...

Personally, I miss the clunkiness of retro, dial-up technology. During my teenage years, I knew that it took our Ark of the Covenant-era desktop computer the same amount of time to turn on as it did for me to boil the kettle or squeeze a spot. These ...

At six I started school, and my dad, a senior high school teacher, would check my homework after coming home from work. My mother took me to piano lessons and, as we went, she would explain the construction of good articles chosen from various studen...