Inspired by the Miliband brothers' battle over the leadership of the Labour Party, Howard Jacobson reflects upon life as the older brother:

So why, then, did [my mother] have a second child when I was perfectly happy enjoying sole possession as the first? All right, I wouldn't be prime minister. But couldn't I go on being lord chamberlain in my own house? I have already, in this column, described the details of my brother's invasion of my territory. Suffice it to say that one minute he wasn't and then he was, that I had been banished from my mother's sight for a week because I had the measles and when I returned she was holding him up in the front window for me to see – triumphantly, as though he were the FA Cup – and had forgotten my name. What happened over the next 10 years was what always happens. I pretended to love him and when no one was looking tried to kill him. It would have been the same with the Milibands, though they had a Marxist philosopher for a father whereas ours was a children's magician; so that while David was trying to brain Ed with wage-labour and capital, I was sawing my brother in half.

Nicholas Lezard on parenting and Time Lords:

Doctor Who with the children. This is an emotionally charged time for the divorced father. When people started tossing around phrases along the lines of "Russell T Davies has brought back family Saturday evening TV viewing", I wonder if they appreciated the importance of what they were saying. Like Davies – who's almost exactly my age (albeit with rather more achievements) – I grew up with Doctor Who, and can remember Patrick Troughton as the Time Lord (1966-69). I went a bit meh about the show after Tom Baker dropped out, although I respected Peter Davidson's cricket jumper, but by then I had other things on my mind: few girls were going to be impressed by boys who watched it.

But when I had children, I became interested in what they might like, so when Davies brought the show back I was delighted that my then nine-year-old daughter, on seeing the first teasing posters with Christopher Ecclestone and the Tardis, said they thrilled her without her exactly knowing why. It was then that I began to suspect that what Doctor Who is about is not so much time and space travel, as modes of alternative fatherhood. [...]