Sam Leith

Another day, another dispiriting survey about the crisis in childhood reading. Parents who earn more than £100,000 a year are the least likely of all social groups surveyed to read aloud every night to their children. So much for the sharp-elbowed middle classes. Even when we factor in the possibility that the cash-rich and time-poor are outsourcing bedtime stories to nanny, it’s a less than encouraging finding. It tells us something about the dwindling importance of reading to the most successful among us.

Is it possible to avoid taking sides in the latest skirmish of the forever wars about the late Diana, Princess of Wales? I'd like to hope it is, though I appreciate it might be seen as a bit counter-journalistic to do so. Suppose the King is a flawed man, but not a monster? Suppose Earl Spencer is also a flawed man, but not a monster? Suppose the King is a flawed man, but not a monster? Suppose Earl Spencer is also a flawed man, but not a monster? And suppose what we are seeing is two hurt and damaged people revisiting a vicious row between them for the delectation of a public with no interest in the matter but prurience?

In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, the anxious Colonel Cathcart is in the habit of compiling little lists of recent events. He draws these lists up under two headings: "Black Eyes" and "Feathers In My Cap." Into the former, he puts everything that seems to damage his chances of preferment – bombing his own runway again, and so forth – and in the latter, everything that will redound to his credit. I like to imagine Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, and his fellow AI overlords doing something similar. In the "Black Eyes" column, we might find near the top of the list the original sin of generative AI.

If public life contains a very high-profile, very vulnerable fantasist with an inexhaustible appetite for money and publicity, what is the duty of care that we all owe them? It’s a question that seems to arise repeatedly in the so-called post-truth era. Of course, anybody’s lies and delusions are, to a substantial extent, their own responsibility. But these situations always exist in a context.

Just in time to meet his self-imposed deadline of early September, the Prime Minister has found a way of preventing two cop-killers from returning to the streets. The method of keeping the killers of PC Andrew Harper, convicted of manslaughter in the 2019 killing, behind bars is to block all those convicted of any form of manslaughter – along with grooming, death by dangerous driving and causing or allowing the death of a child – from eligibility for the early release scheme. I don’t think it lessens or trivialises the moral enormity of PC Harper’s death to feel uneasy about this This seems to me to be a telling decision, and not necessarily in the way the PM will hope.

The Times, the newspaper of record, has been invited to witness proceedings in No. 10 North – which is Andy Burnham’s Mancunian analogue, I suppose, of Donald Trump’s 'Winter White House'. They witnessed, as you’d expect, some blethering on about planning permission and mayoral powers, a joke by Angela Rayner and a humorous cardboard cut-out of Larry the cat. And at the centre of it all: the man of the hour: Sitting in his trendy new office in Manchester, open-collared shirt, cup of tea on a table in front – milk in first – Burnham is keen to talk about this new policy that he hopes will help him deliver the biggest council house building programme since the war.  Three words. 'Milk in first.' This is, isn’t it, an odd thing to notice.

You could think of it as a Venn diagram. One circle would contain all the people who have read Homer’s Odyssey (it would contain a much, much smaller circle of people who have read it in the original Greek). The other circle would contain all the people who have seen Christopher Nolan’s film. The second of those two circles would contain all the people whose opinion on the movie was remotely worth listening to. The overlap between those two circles would contain all the people who, potentially, would have anything interesting to say about the relationship between Christopher Nolan’s work and the Homeric poem. Grumbling that movies aren’t the same as the books goes back forever And yet.

I wrote in this space not long ago, in the context of Nicola Sturgeon, about how incuriosity can, when taken to extremes, be a sort of superpower. So it appears to be, too, with Nigel Farage. First there was this crypto zillionaire stuffing the pockets of his red corduroy trousers with cash. Did Nigel at no point wonder whether there was any agenda beyond rewarding him personally for being a smashing chap and a real laugh to have a pint with? If he had wondered that, and the thought had crossed his mind that the whole thing might look a bit iffy to the voting public, he would surely have thought it best to make a note of it in the register of Members’ Interests – y'know, just to be on the safe side.