


And the prize for the oddest book title goes to…
The literary world’s least-coveted award is announced
Would you be tempted to read “Highlights in the History of Concrete”? If not, the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year offers other highlights. Such as the 2017 winner, “The Commuter Pig Keeper: A Comprehensive Guide to Keeping Pigs When Time is Your Most Precious Commodity”. Some of its winners offer solutions to universal problems, such as timekeeping, others to problems that you perhaps didn’t know you have, such as the invaluable “How to Avoid Huge Ships” (1992). Yet other titles have a more opaque aim, such as 1993’s winning—and frankly mystifying—“American Bottom Archaeology”. And a few are simply odd: this year’s pick, announced on December 6th, is “The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire”.

How lucrative are MPs’ second jobs?
We crunch the numbers on MPs’ earnings from media gigs

Britain’s electric-car roll-out is hitting speed bumps
Some clumsy EV targets will probably get revised. After that, the road should get smoother

Britain’s vote on assisted dying is just the beginning
There are still plenty of chances to kill the bill
Fortnum & Mason caters to a demand for festive fun
The 317-year-old British retailer lights up for Christmas
New marching orders and a new leader for Britain’s civil service
Keir Starmer gives the new head of the civil service a near-impossible job
The British state is blind
How to cope when a government can no longer see