Sports Calendar

News to delight the nation’s literati

This is not the first time that one generation embraced the celebrity memoir only for the next to disown it

Modern 'Jetman' has earlier antecedents

Yves Rossy has drawn comparison with the pioneers of flight who risked life and limb in the first years of the 20th century

Pomp and happenstance

Modern European states have conceded far more sovereignty to the EU than the kingdoms of Central Europe devolved to a Holy Roman Emperor

Should the sexes stay separate in sport?

It is in motor racing that there is the proudest tradition of pitting women directly against men at the highest level

Sleeping dogs of war

Not everyone implicated in the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea will be delighted that Simon Mann might not keep mum

Hallowe'en parties are all the rage

Some revellers may pretend they are reviving ancient Celtic rites, but Hallowe'en's current format is essentially American

Sir Oswald Mosley and the BBC

For much of its history, the corporation actively blocked Britain’s most famous far-Right politician from television and radio

A devotion to relics, religious or otherwise

A quarter of a million people have paid their respects to the foot and thigh bones of St Thérèse of Lisieux

'Squandermania' in Whitehall

Nothing in the Labour manifesto of October 1974 indicated that the party aimed to cut government spending by 8 per cent

The murky history of arms deal backhanders

Now it would be hard to imagine double-dealing on the scale done by Sir Basil Zaharoff in the years before the First World War

Literary fumblings: The Princess and the President

In the 19th century the political roman à clef was a popular format for settling scores under the guise of fiction

High heels make a political statement

TUC's backing of the motion against high heels in the workplace suggests the fight for equality is levelling down rather than up

Politically controlled medicine

Barack Obama’s defence of his health care reforms may prove the most important speech of his presidency

Slugging it out on air

The BBC first tried to get Sir Alec Douglas-Home and his Labour rival, Harold Wilson, to spar before the cameras in 1964

The al-Megrahi affair

In contrast to the Lockerbie bomber case, US public and political opinion often interceded to get IRA terrorists released early

Stella the Fella

Caster Semenya's unhappy predicament is reminiscent of the nudges and winks that dogged successful women athletes in the 1930s

The theft of the royal treasury in 1303

If the purchasing power of money is taken into account, last week's £40 million diamond heist on Graff, the Mayfair jeweller, scooped far less...