Tuesday's comment from the papers in...

Today in Times Comment

• David Aaronovitch: Can you imagine what a jury, given all that has now been said and written, would do to a Tony Crony?
• Libby Purves: Daily life in the 1800s was arduous — all that sewing was no hobby but household maintenance
• Dean Godson: The suspicion must be that Mr Paisley’s great surges of holy writ were as much about himself and his own position in the unionist family
• Chris Ayres: There is a reverse price war of gourmet junk food and the aim is Total Headline Domination
• Mary Ann Sieghart: There comes a point at which you have to admit that 95 per cent of the world’s scientists can’t be wrong
• Peter Riddell: The majority of British voters want to save the planet, but are dubious about paying higher taxes

And from the rest of the papers…

• Thomas Sutcliffe: (The Independent) - How to whip the Lords into shape
• Joan Smith: (The Independent) - How the unions betrayed women workers
• Philip Hensher: (The Independent) - Great books and stupid readers
• Irwin Stelzer: (The Daily Telegraph) - Relief is in sight. The members of the anti-Gordon Brown fan club who began to think they were doomed from here to eternity to watch the Chancellor present Budgets to the Commons can take heart: only one more to go
• Andrew O'Hagan: (The Daily Telegraph) - If we are going to force British troops into a lousy and pointless war, perhaps the least we could do is to treat them with dignity and effectiveness once they are back. But no. Betrayal is the hallmark of this escapade
• Cristina Odone: (The Daily Telegraph) - When David Cameron said there was no need for 40 flights between Manchester and London because of the "perfectly good train service": with respect, when was the last time you travelled on a 'perfectly good' train?
• George Monbiot: (The Guardian) - Don't let truth stand in the way of a red-hot debunking of climate change
• Jenni Russell: (The Guardian) - The Tories might struggle to throw off the baggage of Thatcher, but the past decade is an even heavier millstone for Brown
• Max Hastings: (The Guardian) - Charles does a lot of good. Until he opens his mouth

And from around the world…

• Eugene Robertson: (Washington Post) - Rather than a specific agenda for the country, it's Barack Obama's sense of mission that has defined his campaign
• Antonia Juhasz: (New York Times) - Iraqis will lose out if their oil reserves are denationalized
• Joseph Bottum: (The Wall Street Journal) - The conservative case against George W. Bush
• Richard Lourie: (Moscow Times) - Relations between Washington and Moscow are at a new post-Soviet low

Comments

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Philip Hensher's article is well worth reading. Some books I read for their sheer fascination ("Crime and Punishment") without any external incentive; others because I asked my students to do so ("Clarissa" and "Anna Karenina"); still others had to await my retirement from teaching ("Dombey and Son" and "War and Peace," a third of which I had read several times before). I read "Ulysses" more than once because as a 20th-century academic in English I felt I simply had to know it. But I will not sit in judgment on anyone who has not been able to finish it or even start on it, anymore than I can blame someone for not attempting Mount Everest.