Proms Podcast

We’re here . . . and you’re not

Ever since the invention of the British postcard in 1894, holidaymakers have been struggling to find the perfect message

Let's have a universal museum

It's pointless trying to work out who owns ancient art objects. We need to share them around the world

Mamma Mia, how can we resist them?

What made the band great was their lyrics, whether about the Mexican Revolution or money being funny

From national bogeyman to ruinous failure

The waxwork Hitler in Berlin is the latest proof of Germany’s determination to come to terms with a gruesome history

SOS: not Save Our Souls, Sailors, Ships or Skins

SOS is simply the shortest, simplest three-letter arrangement in Morse code: three dots, three dashes and three more dots

A Zimbabwe joke is no laughing matter

Tyrants may try to ban it, but humour has a way of seeping through the cracks of any dictatorship

The authors who let slip the dogs of war

Mercenaries make fine fiction. But in real life they are almost always doomed to failure

Why should these myths be scotched?

Scotland's traditions may well be a fiction. But they are better than England's

Losing such moving monuments is vandalism

Like old soldiers, the Name Trees of Normandy and their wartime carvings should have been left to fade away

Why James Bond will never go out of fashion

There is nothing in popular culture that can quite compare, for passionate enthusiasm, with the fans of Bond, James Bond

Judge a children’s book by its cover

Publishers give us plenty of clues to a title’s target audience; we don’t need read-by dates as well

Russians bring home the Bacon

Snobbery towards the art nouveaux riches is absurd. The rich have always bought up art

Buried, razed - but not forgotten

A history lesson from the Warsaw Ghetto: we need to keep evidence of our everyday lives

UFO: an Undeniably Fading Obsession

The opening of the British X-Files shows that the internet has killed off flying saucers

Angel of the South: the wrong horse

The plan for a huge sculpture in Kent is brilliant. But a pony would be the best symbol

'Vehicles for malice, charity, love'

Wills matter to ordinary people: they leave behind something important for our inheritors

Obama and Clinton: the tripping points

In the biggest democratic contest on Earth the smallest things may be decisive in the end

Economical with the truthiness

In our Wiki-world, first-hand knowledge seems unnecessary and the story more important