Spiral Notebook: Driving the getaway-with-it car

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

I try to limit how often I pick apart Mayor Lutfur Rahman's empty rhetoric, partly because it's a full-time job and partly because it wearies the soul.

However, an occasional example suffices to cover the whole.

Film review: Non-Stop (12A)

WHAT'S ON

Non-Stop
(12A) 106mins
★★★★✩

Amid the airport warnings about gels, baby milk and sharp objects, there should be a 6ft 5in silhouette of wounded bear Liam Neeson. You simply don't want to be sharing cabin class with this gravity-stricken trouble magnet.

Spiral Notebook: Nothing lasts forever

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

I met a man the other day who made history. Or at least extended its boundaries.

Dr Nick Ashton of the British Museum was one of the team who identified small indentations in slab of sedimentary rock as footprints and in doing so set a new marker on this country's ancient history.

How a secret trapped in the rock for a million years was revealed and gone within a fortnight

WHAT'S ON

"Diligence is the mother of good luck." So says the 16th century proverb its truth would be met with a nod of recognition for a team of scientists who discovered the Happisburgh footprints.

Spiral Notebook: The prime minister is taking charge of the flooding crisis. Feel better now?

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

Every saga has a tipping point. The Hanging Rails of Dawlish was perhaps the moment when the flooding story moved from an idiosyncratic spasm of mid-Atlantic weather patterns to a political crisis lapping at Downing Street's door.

Film review: The Monuments Men (15)

ENTERTAINMENT

The Monuments Men
(12A) 118mins
★★★✩✩

If the story of the recapture of looted art from the clutches of the Nazis were not true, it is exactly the kind of madcap caper that would light the eyes of Hollywood.

Stage review: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Barbican

ENTERTAINMENT

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Barbican
★★★★✩

For such a fantastical production as this collaboration of Bristol Old Vic and Handspring Puppet Company, director Tom Morris still finds moments to be very literal.

Spiral Notebook: How a voter's inquiry into election canvassers ends up with him denounced as a 'pervert'

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

In December, I made the Mayor's Office very angry. One of the disciples was quickly on the case, shouting a lot and accusing me of all sorts of devilry before slamming down the phone.

My crime? I had reported that an inquiry would investigate claims that cold callers in Wapping, who were presenting themselves as from Tower Hamlets Homes, were actually peddling the mayor.

Commentary: If at first you don't succeed - lessons for students and education policy champions alike

Of all the Big Ideas bequeathed by the Blair government, the one that has intrigued foreign leaders more than most is his Delivery Unit, headed up by Sir Michael Barber in the early 2000s.

The idea that success is the mundane application of a handful of disciplines ("government by routine, not government by spasm") may not appeal to a politician's ego, the glossy brochure industry or the media but "it works", says Sir Michael.

TV blog: 16 reasons why Top Gear and Sons Of Anarchy are the same programme, only different

ENTERTAINMENT

One is a tale of rogues blasting rival gangs in violent street brawls and the other is Sons Of Anarchy. What are the other themes the two programmes got in common.

Book review: The Sting Man, by Robert W Greene

ENTERTAINMENT

The Sting Man
By Robert W Greene (Penguin)
★★★✩✩

American Hustle - David O Russell's Oscar tipped film with the big hair and the big cast - is not, in case you were wondering, a Transatlantic take on the antics of Mickey Bricks, Albert Stroller and Ash "Three Socks" Morgan.