About thirty years ago, I picked up a book in a second-hand shop which I’ve gone back to time after time. It’s called Pandaemonium – which was, of course, Milton’s invented name for Satan’s palace in Paradise Lost. It’s by Humphrey Jennings, a pioneering documentary filmmaker who died in 1950 at the early age of…
Even thirty years on, Yes, Minister captures something both funny and profound about government. If the stereotypical civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby really wanted to warn his hapless minister Jim Hacker off a course of action, he would simply tell him ‘that’s very brave, minister’. Sometime over the weekend during which I write this, or…
There is a rhythm to the year which is recognisable, sometimes reassuring – we all feel good about the familiar – and sometimes mildly irritating – time cannot fly by that fast, surely. So the Easter eggs appear in the shops as the Christmas decorations are put away – squeezing the Valentine’s cards in between…