Writing on everything from a defence of suburban life and moderate politics to big ideas and pop culture, Daniel Finkelstein is one of the UK’s most entertaining and widely read columnists. This collection brings together Finkelstein’s greatest writings from The Times, ranging from the personal – with his articles on growing up Jewish in Hendon Central and on the deaths of both of his parents – to the political, with columns on how to predict elections, the way political science showed us Ed Miliband was on his way to defeat, and why the base rate of coups meant Jeremy Corbyn wouldn’t be ousted before an election.

Daniel’s mother Mirjam Wiener was the youngest of three daughters born in Germany to Alfred and Margarete Wiener. Alfred, a decorated hero from the Great War, is now widely acknowledged to have been the first person to recognise the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews and began, in 1933, to catalogue in detail Nazi crimes. After moving his family to Amsterdam, he relocated his library to London and was preparing to bring over his wife and children when Germany invaded the Netherlands. Before long, the family was rounded up, robbed and sent to starve in Bergen-Belsen.