How will we handle the next contagion?
There’s nothing unprecedented about Covid-19 itself. The equally novel, equally infectious Asian flu of 1957 had commensurate fatalities in Britain:…
Amusement parks
August, as usual, will be the busiest month for Britain’s amusement parks — which is odd when you consider that…
BP, Amazon and airlines light different paths to survival
We should take heart from BP’s £5.1 billion second-quarter loss, accompanied by a halving of its dividend. What’s good about…
The scourge of mankind
In supposedly unprecedented times such as ours, there are compelling reasons to turn to the history of medicine. For hope,…
A tide of distrust
Over the past 50 years, M. John Harrison has produced a remarkably varied body of work: a dozen atmospheric novels…
A radical rite
The history of rubbish can be scholarship, but the history of scholarship is often rubbish. Hindsight diminishes earlier habits of…
Tantrums of a tyrant
It is easy to forget the abnormality of Donald Trump’s presence in the White House. Before his election it would…
The gay carousel
John Giorno, who died last year, was a natural acolyte: he needed a superior being to set him in motion.…
Small is beautiful
The novelist, memoirist and film-maker Xiaolu Guo writes with tremendous delicacy and nuance about migration, language, alienation, and love. A…
Madcap escapades
The narrative of an adolescent travelling by water with an older companion, undergoing trials and ordeals, encountering scoundrels and villains,…
Magnificent muddle
In the 62 years since I first heard and saw Don Carlo, in the famous and long-lasting production by Visconti…
Go figure
An oxymoron is a clever gambit in an exhibition title. The Whitechapel Gallery’s Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium…
Believing the hype
People often tell me I have a strange way of looking at the world. Obviously, it doesn’t seem strange to…
Double trouble
American Pickle is a comedy based on a short story by Simon Rich, originally published in the New Yorker, and…
Sprinting in the sand
Dancing at Dusk captures the final rehearsal of a new version of Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring. It’s only…
Beauty and the beast
Michael Hann talks to Kevin Rowland about Dexys, insecurity and the cocaine years
Bonjour happiness
Soon, very soon now — even sooner than I imagined, if A Suitable Boy turns out to be as lacklustre…
Portrait of the week
Home Some 2.7 million people in Greater Manchester and parts of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, where many Muslims live, were…
Weighty matters
Tackling obesity is the latest government initiative, universally condemned as nannying. Ask a Spartan. From an early age, Spartan children…
Soho moonwalk
Back to the West End at last. After a four- month lay-off, I grabbed the first available chance to catch…
Letters
Peer review Sir: A neat solution to the levels of inactivity of some members of the House of Lords (‘Peer…
Barometer
The other Argos The Argos catalogue, known as the ‘Book of Dreams’, is no longer to appear in printed form.…
