Peter Mandler News Today

SIR – I served 23 years in the Royal Air Force and for the last two was part of a recruitment team (Letters, January 29). The training for this role included an extensive specialist course on recruitment techniques and policies, and a visit to many training establishments that enabled me to offer advice to potential recruits on their chosen trade. I feel this specialist training, together with my personal experience of Service life and conditions, allowed me to encourage, test and eventua...

Varsity investigates the difference between male and female achievement in three long-standing subjects

The Annihilation of Space: A Bad (Historical) Concept - Volume 65 Issue 4

IN the years following the last war Bishop’s Waltham was a dusty and decrepit place in search of a future. It was, however, much loved by some…

College student Kit Renshaw-Hammond, 16, from Penzance has been crowned the national winner of the Historical Association’s Great Debate 2021-22.

Allen Lane; 496 pages; £25. To be published in America in July by Skyhorse; $24.99 THIS MASTERLY book offers a robust defence of meritocracy. Adrian Wooldridge, The Economist’s political editor, traces the idea from Plato’s “Republic”, through Napoleon’s “career open to talent” to the attack on Victorian nepotism led by Britain’s intellectual aristocracy. He ends with interesting speculation that meritocracy may now have better prospects in Asia than in the West. The term “m...

Pressure to support Tory position on contentious issues such as colonialism ‘cancels honest debate’ Sir Charles Dunstone quit as chair of Royal Museums Greenwich after a trustee’s reappointment was vetoed. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images Sir Charles Dunstone quit as chair of Royal Museums Greenwich after a trustee’s reappointment was vetoed. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images Sun 9 May 2021 05.15 EDT Ministers are facing mounting anger over claims that they are ...

Public schools and the public Why Eton, Harrow, Rugby and the rest thrived. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, Labour leaders have promised for the past 80 years to “do something” about fee-charging private schools. The 2019 election manifesto pledged to “close the tax loopholes” they enjoy and seek advice on “integrating [them] and creating a comprehensive education system”. This was a considerably weaker commitment than the announcement in 1973 by Roy Hattersley, then shadow ed...