If, like me, you remember from your younger years the mesmerising Newton’s Cradle; a foot-long plastic matchstick concealing a lighter;...

If you know where and how to look in London today, there isn’t much that separates the present from the past. Stand in Piccadilly, just...

A copy of the last-ever Evening Standard on a pub table in Holborn a few hours ago. Next week a new, Thursday-only publication will...

What is a woman’s life, when remembered? Achievements, failures, gains, losses? What part does society play? And does the answer change...

Footage this week of the old Copenhagen Bourse burning, complete with toppling spire, inevitably recalled Paris’s conflagration five...

Oxford Street is, we are told, experiencing what has been described variously as a rebound, a recovery or a revival. The tatty American...

This is the Lego 315-3 European Taxi, released in 1963 well before I was born and so with some claim to be my oldest set. Mum can’t...

A young woman stands on the steps of a building; another, taller woman stands next to her. The clothes could be from any of the last few...

This week’s British mission to orbit domestically-built satellites from home soil, using a modified Boeing 747 to carry aloft a rocket...

For a powerful man to claim ‘I have the country’s best interests at heart’ is easy; assessing whether he is right is rather harder. When...

The question is often asked by those calling for the restitution of objects in the collections of the London institution, the world’s...

The tide of time governs everything we do, and always has. We might measure its passage more finely than our ancestors, but we still plan...

No plan survives contact with the enemy, as Russia’s armed forces have discovered in Ukraine. Yet strikes on civilian targets, convoys...

News that Diageo is to open a microbrewery in Covent Garden next year as part of a food and drink-centred attraction called Guinness at...

Parliament and the BBC: two great institutions in two great buildings, yet all are under threat. Intellectual attacks are being aimed at...

As many of us continue to find ourselves working from home, some consider their future as a result and wider demographics inexorably...

Poised as we are today between the old and the new, now feels like a good time to explain the loss of my blog. For two months this autumn...