In the 21st century, no matter how much money you spend, how expensive your lawyers, pictures can never be suppressed, banned, wiped or eliminated. They exist in cyberspace until the next even hotter story comes along. The Duchess made two big mistak...

Nick Clegg responded as he had warned the PM that he would. He withdrew Liberal Democrat support for the changes to constituency boundaries that would have given the Conservatives an advantage. It was politics as gangland tit-for-tat killing. Like t...

The morning after was glorious, too, and here at the stadium of the Potomac Nationals, the franchise's minor league affiliate in suburban Virginia, the visitor was FDR's distant successor. Fêting him were some 12,000 exuberant supporters, not a few o...

The long delay is one reason for fearing that the whole truth about this shocking and extraordinary case may not emerge. However vivid certain details remain – the image of an assassin slipping polonium-210 into his victim's cup of tea at a London h...

As do those European nations which have collectively agreed that Holocaust denial is an offence, that minorities should be protected from hate speech, that individuals have the right to privacy and legal protection against libel, that big businesses ...

Offices were noisier places in those days. They were performance spaces. Typewriters clacked and dinged, phones rang, fax machines pleaded, while the biggest personalities built their phone conversations into extravagant one-man shows, often for the ...

Instead of a slanging match between religious views, ramping up the recent tension and breeding more hatred and extremist reactions, a multitude of moderate voices came together to gently laugh, make jokes and basically just take the mick. Here's the...

Did Paul Revere ride to warn the British "that they weren't going to be taking away our arms", as Sarah Palin claimed? Was the Jamestown colony the first socialist venture? And did African Americans fight in the Civil war to keep themselves enslaved?...

As reporters sift through the details of his 2011 return, some interesting details are emerging, says the National Journal: "Mitt Romney paid the Internal Revenue Service somewhere in the ballpark of $250,000 more than he legally needed to last year,...

Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative chief whip, admits he was rude, but denies using the words "moron" and "fucking plebs". The two officers stand by their story, which is all the more damaging because it fits into the narrative of a Cabinet stuffed w...

Well, we all know what happened next. Harry Potter waved his wand, and now J K Rowling is worth a billion dollars. On Thursday, she will publish her first novel for adults, and yet another chapter in an extraordinary life will begin. But for all the...

A century-and-a-half after Hard Times was published, Mitt Romney, the Bounderby of his era, is revealed as showing similarly dismissive contempt for the exaggerated expectations of the poorer half of the American population at a $50,000-a-plate dinne...

On Sunday evening I had an argument about Coldplay with Victoria. I explained that nothing on earth would make me watch Coldplay at the Paralympics closing ceremony, and that, in fact,I found it hard to like anyone who likes Coldplay. Liking Coldplay...

Second, and particularly significantly, the comedienne Sarah Millican declared that on her next national tour she would not appear at theatres owned by the powerful Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) because of its high booking fees – the accumulated ch...

The Deputy Prime Minister's team freely admit it is a welcome fluke that the apology has been transformed into an iTunes hit, with the earnings going to charity. From now on when the broken student fee pledge is thrown in their faces, all Lib Dems wi...

Within a few years of Jesus' death, the Church tried to exclude non-Jews from membership, but the Bible records their final decision – to judge questions of exclusion by primary reference to God's overwhelming love. That's why the Church can now acce...

Poor Nick. On the eve of a tricky autumn conference too, with his poll ratings zooming down faster than a seagull swooping on a plate of chips on Brighton beach. We know when a politician has committed an indelible gaffe: think of Neil Kinnock falli...

When Nick Clegg apologised for breaking his election promise on tuition fees, he adopted the sad eyes and poker face familiar from a string of other people's staged sorrys. As one wag instantly realised, though, something crucial was missing – and th...