"The Tories are in arguably the worst state we’ve ever seen a Major party in. They lead on just one Major Policy area, defence, and even then Labour came within a 1 per cent lead here in December. Dylan Difford has shown just how much worse the Tory position is than 1997 when they at least led on three major policy questions ahead of the election." James Austin explains why a Conservative wipe-out at the next election is becoming more of a possibility...
...which is an outcome for which Matt Carr, itemising the strange death of Tory England, yearns.
"When we were taking players from union – Jonathan Davies, Offiah – it was a real psychological body blow that forced them to change. We gutted Welsh rugby union. They fined Davies for saying he wanted to be paid so he could get a mortgage! Now it’s completely flipped." Anthony Broxton is interviewed about his book Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher's Britain.
Richard Williams reviews an album that celebrates Les Cousins, the Soho folk and blues club that flourished between 1964 and 1972: "It is, as you’d expect, a splendidly varied selection, starting and ending with big names — Bert Jansch and the Strawbs — and containing both even bigger ones (Paul Simon, Al Stewart, Ralph McTell, Nick Drake, Roy Harper and Cat Stevens) as well as many more of those whose reputations never really escaped the folk world, like the brilliant guitarists Davy Graham, Mike Cooper, John James, Sam Mitchell and Dave Evans."
"A good place to start is by acknowledging the snobbery - and misogyny - inherent in this question. Christie’s success tends to be viewed as a phenomenon, a freak of literature, which rarely happens with more highbrow writers, especially when they’re male. How often do people ask why the heck we still read F. Scott Fitzgerald? Or about the secret to Raymond Chandler’s continuing popularity?" Kemper Donovan responds to those who ask why Agatha Christie has sold so many books.
