BRITISH author A.N. Wilson writes in a recent issue of The Daily Mail about the TV hit “Downton Abbey,” the hugely popular BBC Masterpiece Theater series about the lives of Edwardian aristocrats and their servants. Wilson contends viewers gained an overly flattering picture of Britain’s pre-socialist past. That is dangerous. He says the cult of costume dramas is not merely silly [...]

  IN THE foregoing entry, a mother wrote in to ask for advice. Her teenage son is receiving painful physical taunts from friends. This is not a case of harassment by enemies, she said, but of horseplay or teasing that has gone too far. Here a reader responds when I asked him what she should do. He makes an interesting point. Men today [...]