Adultery, theft, incest — they don’t make popes like they used to. But they do make TV series like The Borgias. But is it fair?

The Vatican under the Borgias, Jeremy Irons believes, was like Washington today.

Once upon a time, there were five short stories a week on BBC Radio 4. They lay in the hammock of the afternoon at 3.30pm, offering surprise, solace and humour, and the pleasure of hearing a single voice reading them. Often, in the words of the historical novelist Sarah Dunant, they provided transport “into a different world”.

More than three decades after the US soap opera Dallas introduced the world to warring brothers JR and Bobby Ewing, a new series of the show has been given the go-ahead.

An Oxbridge education should not be a source of shame, Jeremy Paxman has said in an attack on critics who brand the universities 'elitist'.

Paxman, the presenter who tests the nation's brightest students in University Challenge, said