Matthew Donnelly

Photograph by Horace Nicholls (1917), Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons College meals at Oxford and Cambridge certainly aren’t regarded as the pinnacle of gastronomic excellence. In fact, they have a pretty appalling reputation for being bland, sloppy, and depressing — enough to make Marco Pierre White shudder. This is a reputation that has persisted for generations and I, for one, think it is unjustified. Oxford students tend to love their own colleges. I certainly do.

The Country Pub by David Teniers the Younger (1660), Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons Roughly 1,000 pubs have banned Labour MPs from their premises, revealing something about the state of British politics. When landlords resort to gestures as dramatic as this, it suggests a frightening breakdown in the normal channels of democratic dialogue. After mounting pressure, Rachel Reeves’s climbdown on business rates for pubs has prompted legitimate questions about fairness and consistency.

Zwei raufende Buben by Giulio del Torre (1856–1932), Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons When was the last time you viewed the content on someone else’s social media feed? Last week, I was sitting behind a man on the bus. I was on one of those raised seats, which provided the perfect vantage point for a good snoop at his digital activity (I won’t make a habit of this).