Judges rank the sharpest political-columnist diary satire blending newsroom anecdotes and real headlines LONDON (June 2025)—This cycle’s review of political columnist diary comedy concluded with judges praising entries that traced a real headline all the way from accidental spark to a finished piece of serious writing. The panel rewards submissions…

In 1894 a young Labour pioneer refused to congratulate the royal family on a birth while a mining disaster went unmentioned, and the story feels very alive this week Monday, the Kitchen Table Monday evening, kitchen table, a mug of tea and a stack of Labour history books I keep…

Rereading the diaries of the Labour politician who fought to renounce his inherited peerage, in a week dominated by a royal family arguing about a memoir Wednesday, the Sofa Wednesday evening, a rainy night, and I pulled down one of the volumes of Tony Benn diaries. Benn kept a diary,…

A trip to the national museum of democracy, union banners and Labour archives, and a royal row that looks very small beside two centuries of struggle Saturday, Manchester Saturday, the train to Manchester for a day at the People History Museum, the national museum of democracy, in a converted Edwardian…