During the last four years, outrage has been expressed in many quarters—ecclesiastical, academic, political and journalistic—about the Church of England’s appalling  treatment of one of its greatest bishops, George Bell.  An important new book underlines Bell’s enduring significance on the world

“The Conservative Party is the national party or it is nothing”, Disraeli famously declared in 1867. Its duty to represent the interests of the whole nation was, however, first set out by the man whose career Disraeli destroyed, Sir Robert Peel, as Alistair Lexden pointed out in a letter in The Daily Telegraph on July 26.

Harold Macmillan’s dismissal of seven members of his Cabinet in 1962 was unprecedented. On July 24, Boris Johnson sacked eleven. Alistair Lexden described what is now the second biggest Cabinet purge in a letter in The Times on July 26.

Homosexuals are treated as criminals in 37 of the 53 countries of the Commonwealth. In some of them extremely harsh punishments are available to the courts.

For many years Alistair Lexden, then Alistair Cooke, was the Deputy Director of the Conservative Research Department.

In early July, the Government introduced  a very short Bill to give it yet more time to try and restore the Assembly and Executive in Northern Ireland, which collapsed two and a half years ago.

Has the Tory Party ever been in a worse plight than it is today? What were the periods of greatest difficulty that it faced in the past?

There was a time after the Second World War, now largely forgotten, when local councils made it possible for children in difficult and deprived circumstances to go to boarding schools.

Much has been said and written about  the immense damage that has been done by many police officers, who  made public the names of individuals suspected of sex abuse crimes before any charges had been brought against them.

Some historical errors are so firmly entrenched that it seems almost impossible to correct them. Neville Chamberlain continues to be regarded a weak man who was bossed around by Hitler; he was in fact an extraordinarily tough and formidable statesman.