Whisper it quietly: 2009 has been something of a bad year for Darwin. The bicentennial celebrations of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species has led to an...
Murder is back in fashion. Historians such as Ginger Frost and M.J. Wiener have begun to exploit the fact that deaths in suspicious circumstances tend to leave more interesting records than deaths...
Martin James discusses how the Fab Four played their part in the loss of rock's dancefloor vitality
This book is about pain, but in a very broad sense indeed. Almost any unwelcome psychic disturbance comes under the heading of pain for Arne Johan Vetlesen. This has its good side, for it means that...
Susan Sontag was a controversial figure. Her writing, activism and strong, frequently unpopular but influential opinions earned her a prominent and unique place in American intellectual circles,...
David Delpy, chief executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, argues that there is "a risk that those outside the academy would believe that all academics (are) opposed to...
If the gross domestic product figures due next week show no sign of recovery, it will be the first time the UK has had six successive quarters without growth.This leaves me wondering why the UK needs...
Mary Malcolm's opinion piece "Nurturing critical minds" (15 October) made me laugh aloud. Just one sentence of her article focused on the workers meant to deliver her vague aims - "Of course, this...
In illustrating courses that have "an obvious pay-off in employment terms" and thus merit support, Alan Ryan ("Practical implications", 8 October) instances a six-month paralegal training course. He...
Having watched BBC Four's The Art of Dying, in which Dan Cruickshank worked at encountering his own mortality, Gary Day asks "what is there to say except that we are all going to kick the bucket?" ("...
The anguished response of the president of the National Union of Students to my article on student finances ("The life of Riley? Hardly", 15 October) leads me to recall the words of Mandy Rice-Davies...
What A.C. Grayling says about the concept of "art" ("Art: whether you love it or hate it, the purpose is to elicit a response", 8 October) cannot be an adequate definition of this concept unless he...
Your historians ("Past mistakes", 15 October) seem to be as guilty as the politicians they criticise. Historians have been criticising the misuse of history by policymakers for centuries. Politicians...
The greatest number of people studying history in Britain are aged between five and 14. If research historians and policymakers wish to be more "directly useful", they might consider giving more than...
Improving the structures that support doctoral students can turn around completion rates. Tara Brabazon sets out a ten-point plan for institutions