There has been plenty of commentary about concerning Charles Dickens, as it is the 200th year of his birth. Here is an entry, written back in 2006 at The Freeman, about him, which looks pretty interesting, and some of the comments (not all of which are very praiseworthy) are worth reading. I never really quite got into reading Dickens. At school, I had to study such books as Oliver Twist and David...

The 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens's birth has prompted Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to get his cabinet colleagues in the mood to celebrate one of Britain's greatest writers.

Within the turmoil of allegations over authoritarian and undemocratic practices, Hungary celebrates the centenary of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II, writes Zsolt  Németh, Hungary's state secretary of Foreign Affairs. More »

Michael Gove’s giving a robust defence of his plans to make it quicker and easier for schools to sack bad teachers. ‘You wouldn’t tolerate an underperforming surgeon in an operating theatre, or an underperforming midwife at your child’s birth,’ he says in the Mail. ‘Why is it that we tolerate underperforming teachers in the classroom?’ And he was similarly...

Since China’s so-called “one child” policy began in 1979, cheap, easy and anonymous birth control has been tantamount to a government-guaranteed right. Chinese pharmacies have long made birth control pills and emergency contraceptives -- also known as the “morning after...

Over Christmas, TV got off to a flying start in celebrating the bicentenary of the author’s birth - with mixed results.

It is the bicentenary of Charles Dickens' birth in February, and Christmas Day today; so a sterling occasion to reproduce The Spectator's original review of A Christmas Carol from the archives. It was written for our issue dated 23 December 1843, and differs from most modern reviews in quoting extremely liberally from the text, to the extent that there is more Dickens than Spectator in w...

George Osborne's decision to increase capital funds will finance more buildings to cope with a rising birth rate and demand for free schools

It seems there's a social convulsion every generation. 1914, 1939, 1964(ish), 1989 - a cycle that repeats about every 25 years. I'm not going to get too numerological about this - the average age at marriage and/or first live birth varies over time - but I do wonder whether one important element in history is human physiology. It's also odd that we speak of a "generation", as though...

Mississippi voters reject a move that would have made abortion and some birth control illegal in the Bible Belt state