I really don’t understand all this sabre rattling rhetoric, with some junior UK defence minister claiming the UK is “rapidly developing” plans to prepare the entire country for the possible outbreak of war, because “the shadow of war is knocking on Europe’s door.” If the

Great read from Lola Salem - 'The state simply cannot be agnostic about culture, precisely because culture is, or should be, the living expression of principles which sustain and nourish our way of life.' engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-p…

🚨NEW: Britain today feels like a country ripe for satire, but the genre is at its nadir as our insecure cultural gatekeepers flee all self-criticism. Fortunately for us, the job has already been partially done, almost 50 years ago. Chris Bayliss explores Britain's banal

Latin is still alive, and not just for scholars and enthusiasts; in some places, it's still used as imperial propaganda, just as it was in Ancient Rome. Today, Michael Fontaine of Cornell University investigates the strange case of Vladimir Putin's Latin orations... antigonejournal.com/2025/12/caesar…

Something of Wagner’s Parsifal about this Arsenal v Wolves - ‘where time and space becomes one’ - 36 mins in and it feels like we must be at least halfway through the second leg.

Er, no.

As with everything Helen writes and broadcasts, this is well worth a listen (no paywall). It’s interesting that two liberal Cambridge academics reach a level of personal vituperation about Starmer and Reeves beyond anything I’ve heard even from Farage and Banks!

Fine sentiments, but Starmer served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and has as PM presided over a four-fold increase in anti-Semitic incidents, acquiesced in the ban on Israeli football fans and recognised a non-existent state to appease Muslim supporters.

Lighting the menorah on the first night of Chanukah, Islington Green, 14 December 2025

The death toll from the horrendous Bondi Beach massacre continues to rise. Latest count is an appalling 16 dead. For those who’ve been marching these past few years demanding to ‘globalise the intifada’ this is a barbarous anti-Semitic consequence of their pro-Islamist stupidity.

Words are cheap. Stop the hate marches immediately. They want one thing: intifada = the murder of Jews. By not acting, you allow it.

V pleased to be a signatory. Thanks to Ian Austin for leading on it. As massacre of Bondi Beach continues to claim lives & logical endpoint of contemporary antisemitism is so horrifyingly revealed, it's essential our UK institutions don't inadvertently enable Jew hatred here

Lots of knocking BBC News (UK), sometimes deserved, but BBC Radio 5 Live’s coverage of the Bondi killings has been exemplary, especially this evening.

What is it about Stourbridge? Perhaps Adrian Wooldridge has an answer.

Well if you're at all serious about protection, stop hate marches chanting for the globalized intifada and river to sea and give Jewish demonstrators the same rights of free speech. Do it. We've had it with crocodile tears.

A chance discovery in a Tokyo library uncovered a medieval memoir by Lady Nijō, a glimpse into the tradition of female autobiography in Heian and Kamakura Japan. Confessions of a Japanese noblewoman | Katherine Harvey engelsbergideas.com/notebook/confe…

Very important to corral all these people in one place, safely away from normal, decent, folk.

We are in the middle of a mental health crisis and yet the government is crippling those places where people can access the best mental health support known to humanity: human company. The hospitality sector isn’t a ‘leisure industry’, it’s core to human thriving.

Are you a civil servant frustrated by the waste, dysfunction, & poor leadership in Whitehall? Take our confidential anonymous survey to describe the problems you experience and your suggestions for a better civil service forms.reformparty.uk/civil-service-…

The former Syrian regime was an Arab North Korea that father then son ruled with an iron fist. The Assads’ reign of terror | James Snell engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-a…