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Two fine new books on the journeys of birds and the first ornithologist     This is recent Times feature article I wrote on the incredible new discoveries of what seabirds get up to far from land, and on the man who first visited seabird colonies with a scientific eye in the 1660s. It’s sometimes […]

How the UK held off regulation that could have killed a life-saving technology My recent Times essay on the history of vaping and why the UK became such a hub of electronic cigarettes: Britain is the world leader in vaping. More people use ecigarettes in the UK than in any other European country. It’s more […]

The plot to prevent Brexit is not being honest My Times column on the parliamentary battle over Brexit: Dominic Grieve, MP, and Viscount Hailsham are clever barristers both, and agreeable company. I was at Oxford with one, sit in the Lords with the other, and count them as friends. But what they are up to […]

A House of Lords report on the opportunities for artificial intelligence My Times column on artificial intelligence: As a member of the House of Lords select committee on artificial intelligence, whose report is released today, I was struck by two things during the course of our inquiry: how well placed Britain could be to take […]

How public and private bureaucracies stifle innovation My Times column on the rent-seeking crony-capitalists who stifle innovation: While the world economy continues to grow at more than 3 per cent a year, mature economies, from Europe to Japan, are coagulating, unable to push economic growth above sluggish. The reason is that we have more and […]

Urban wildlife is expanding and evolving faster than expected My Times column on the evolution of urban wildlife:   Easter Monday bank holiday feels like a good moment to put aside politics and consider something far more portentous: evolution. Recently I was walking alongside a canal in central London, surrounded by concrete, glass, steel and […]

True meritocracy is a state in which success is determined by heredity My Times column on genes, intelligence and selective schools: The good news is you can save on school fees. A new study finds that selective schools add almost nothing to the exam results of students, because the advantages teenagers come out with are […]

Unlimited cheap energy would transform society My Times column on Britain’s energy options:   Until 2004 Britain was a net energy exporter. Today, it imports about half its energy. Some of that, in the form of coal and liquefied natural gas, comes directly from Russia, which also supplies a third of Europe’s gas through pipelines. […]

The bias towards bad news is getting worse, and affecting how we act My Times column on the how pessimism bias affects the way we think:   ‘Deadly new epidemic called Disease X could kill millions, scientists warn,” read one headline at the weekend. “WHO issues global alert for potential pandemic,” read another. Apparently frustrated […]

Restricting whether you can build, rather than what, drives up prices My Times column on Britain’s housing crisis: Sajid Javid, the Housing (etc) secretary, is right – and brave — to go on the warpath about Britain’s housing crisis in his new national planning framework, to be launched today. Britain’s housing costs are absurdly high […]