From where I sit - The ultimate test of value
Every year when the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) takes place, the nation holds it breath. Over consecutive days in June, cities across China fall silent and parents pray that their...
Every year when the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) takes place, the nation holds it breath. Over consecutive days in June, cities across China fall silent and parents pray that their...
Obituary
A student consultancy has been set up at the University of Oxford, where undergraduates offer free advice to local organisations. The programme follows a recent pilot scheme, with consultancy work...

A.W. Purdue reflects on Britain's abiding interest in the Continent's past
Maxine Leeds Craig discusses the highlights and lowlights of black women's beautifying practices
On a clear night, it is nice to look up and imagine that all the stars form a unified celestial community. They do, of course, in a sense. But they are much farther away from each other (and us) than...
I have long admired the immense contribution made to the Enlightenment by French scholars, especially Denis Diderot, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert and others manifest in that vast undertaking, the...
A study of a homosexual subculture will provoke debate from all quarters, discovers Ken Plummer
Any book that defends the humanities is to be welcomed. The threat to their existence is not just from the politicians who want to make them more business-facing but from those within their own ranks...

Dale E. Gary enjoys reading about the surprising public outcry that followed Pluto's demotion
The modern history of the "Irish Question" begins with Fenianism, a mid-Victorian organisation that developed and adapted the strategies of militant nationalist activity that would become commonplace...
In the past two decades, musicologists have realised the importance of putting an operatic work in a historical, cultural, theatrical and literary context. For the most part, the research of opera...
Adam Rutherford finds little intellectual punch in an analysis of impossibly muscly men in tights
BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT- The Management of Everyday LifeEdited by Philip Hancock, senior lecturer in organisation studies, University of Warwick, and Melissa Tyler, senior lecturer in organisation...
Your report on the dearth of foreign-language skills among British graduates emphasises one of the problems that has beset the long-running debate about the decline of such skills in higher education...