Melanie McDonagh

Leighton may be best known for depicting classical figures such as Flaming June but this is a welcome exploration of his landscape works

When you think of Frederic Leighton, eminent Victorian, president of the Royal Academy , painter of that staple of the gift card market, Flaming

Allison Pearson, the highly respectable Daily Telegraph middlebrow columnist, was naturally startled when, on Remembrance Sunday morning, two police presented themselves at her door to tell her that she was under investigation for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in connection with a social media post on X and invited her for a voluntary interview. She was not allowed to know which post, exactly, was being investigated nor who was her accuser.

If there is one woman who has transformed the debate in Britain on assisted suicide, it is Ilora Finlay. When campaigners for it talk about unbearable suffering, it is she who knows what that is like. The relief of pain and suffering is her business. She has been working in palliative care since 1987, before

For Londoners whose only contact with the countryside is the Diddlysquat range of Jeremy Clarkson products in the Amazon grocery store the arrival of lots of tractors in Whitehall today driven by actual farmers must be alarming. I say to them: do not worry — they come in peace; they mean no harm.

Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites… there’s an obvious problem here: how do you represent one sense by another? Synesthesia is a neurological condition whereby some people do just that: they experience colour when they hear music, or taste words – think of the Revd Sydney Smith describing heaven as eating foie gras to

Tony Blair said this morning that he felt “devastated” by the death of John Prescott, his deputy when he was prime minister. And no wonder. Prescott was, he observed, the “yin to his yang”, or possibly the other way round, someone from a less privileged background from him, a different aspect of the Labour Party. And that’s precisely why his death feels like the demise of real Old Labour, the working class part of it.

Tony Blair said this morning that he felt “devastated” by the death of John Prescott , his deputy when he was prime minister. And no wonder.

Is the Ukraine conflict turning into a world war involving Britain? If so, shouldn’t there be more open discussion about it? I mention this because British Storm Shadow long range missiles have been used by Ukraine inside Russian territory. Yesterday, the Russian ambassador to London, Andrei Kelin, declared that “Britain and the UK is now directly involved in this war, because this firing [of Storm Shadow] cannot happen without Nato staff, British staff as well”. In other words, Russia draws a distinction between sending tanks to Ukraine as Britain has done, and the use of long range missiles which require Nato operatives to function.

Is the Ukraine conflict turning into a world war involving Britain? If so, shouldn't there be more open discussion about it?