Is this the year that ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ – the charity song written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in 1984 to provide relief for the victims of famine in Ethiopia – finally died? The song has been condemned for its broad-brushstrokes lyrics about Africa, and it feels increasingly like the work of
‘He’s more machine than man now’, complains Obi-Wan Kenobi of his notoriously fallen apprentice Darth Vader in Star Wars. The same thought crossed my mind last week in the wake of the worst betrayal I have suffered as an English tutor. Something is wrong when your favourite pupil uses AI to generate the two-line reference they had offered
It was November 1843, two years after Prince Albert first introduced Britain to the tradition of the Christmas tree. Charles Dickens was 31, and yet to grow his beard. A dire report on child labour the previous year had worked him up into a compassionate rage. Just as pressingly, Dickens needed cash. The author was
