The darkest secret about commuting: some of us enjoy it
In the early days of Victorian railways, train journeys were (rightly) considered so dangerous that ticket offices sold life insurance…
Jaw-dropping confessions of a very un-PC Plod
There can’t have been many people who watched Confessions of a Copper (Channel 4, Wednesday) with a growing sense of…
James Walton uncovers the sound of Nashville - money
Twenty minutes into BBC4’s The Heart of Country (Friday), there was a clip of Chet Atkins, country music’s star producer…
Hooray for Homeland - Carrie’s back blasting America’s enemies to pieces with drones
One of the more welcome and surprising things about television at the moment is that Homeland (Channel 4, Sunday) is…
From working-class heroes to Disney World mascots: the sad fate of the Chilean miners
On 5 August 2010, 33 men entered the remote San José mine in Chile’s Atacama desert to begin their 12-hour…
We're great and baboons are losers: this week's lesson from Brian Cox
Anybody feeling a bit depressed about the shortcomings of humanity could do worse than watch Brian Cox’s new series Human…
Colm Toibin’s restraint – like his characters' – is quietly overwhelming
In Colm Tóibín’s much-loved 2009 novel Brooklyn, Eilis Lacy, somewhat to her own surprise, leaves 1950s Enniscorthy (Tóibín’s own home…
Marriage and foreplay Sharia-style
Needless to say, it’s not uncommon to hear single British women in their thirties and forties saying that all the…
Howard Jacobson’s J convinced me that I’d just read a masterpiece
At first sight, J — which has beenshortlisted for the Man Booker Prize — represents a significant departure for Howard…
Now for the really tricky question: can Only Connect survive BBC2?
For some of us, the biggest TV question of recent weeks hasn’t been how Newsnight is doing without Jeremy Paxman,…
Kate Bush Hammersmith Apollo review: Still crazy after all these years
It says something about Kate Bush’s standing in the music world that, perhaps uniquely in the history of long-awaited live…
BBC2’s Hotel India: slums? What slums?
Viewers who like their TV journalism hard-hitting should probably avoid Hotel India, a new BBC2 series about the Taj Mahal…
The case of the amnesiac autobiographer
In October 2002, 28-year-old David Stuart MacLean woke up at Hyderabad railway station. He was standing at the time, and…
Murakami drops magic for realism in this tale of a lonely Tokyo engineer
When Haruki Murakami — Japan’s most successful novelist at home and abroad — was interviewed by the Paris Review in…
Barbie dolls? This girl aims for the head
Channel 4’s Kids and Guns (Thursday) began with an American TV advert in which a young boy’s eyes shone with…
The quest for the perfect guitar riff is a noble one – if not quite the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe
A few weeks ago, my eight-year-old son, who’s taken up the guitar, announced that he’d learned something new. He then…
A tribute to the King – or a compendium of journalistic bad habits?
With Elvis has Left the Building, the longstanding editor of GQ has inexplicably written a book that could serve as…
The Honourable Woman could have done with some help from an overpaid executive in a suit
BBC2’s The Honourable Woman (Thursday) began with a rather portentous voice-over bringing us the unsurprising news that ‘We all have…
The girl who had sex with dolphins
BBC4’s The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins (Tuesday) began with the overstated-sounding claim that it would be tackling ‘perhaps the…
Those weren't the days
If you wanted a brief epigraph for Linda Grant’s recent fiction, then five words from Dorothy Parker might well do…
Is BBC1’s Quirke bravely unhurried – or too slow?
The work of John Banville — Booker-winning novelist and impeccably high-minded literary critic — might seem an unlikely source for…
So Dylan Thomas was a drunk: does this TV drama have anything else to say?
According to its executive producer Griff Rhys Jones, A Poet in New York (BBC2, Sunday) sought to rescue Dylan Thomas…
Jack Bauer hits, er, West Ealing
Whatever worries Kiefer Sutherland may have had about reprising the role of Jack Bauer in 24: Live Another Day (Sky1,…
John Crace digested – twice
Fiction ‘So how come we’re in the same book?’ Paul from The Stranger’s Child asked Florence from On Chesil Beach.…
Caught between a New Age rock and a theory junkie hard place
Siri Hustvedt’s new novel isn’t exactly an easy read — but the casual bookshop browser should be reassured that it’s…
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