Living on a nuclear submarine does your head in
Richard Humphreys spent a good part of five years, between the ages of 18 and 23, living inside a nuclear…
Oswald of Northumbria – an Anglo-Saxon saint-king of the north for our time
In Hamlet a gravedigger asks the riddle: ‘What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or…
Gilgamesh, Michael Schmidt’s ‘life’ of a poem
In the mid-19th century, around lunchtime, a pale young man with an enormous beard could be seen in the British…
A thought-provoking work of ‘moral atonement’ and ‘comparative redemption’
No nation’s defeat is ever quite straight-forward, and sometimes downfall can bring its own kind of posthumous victory. By the…
Betrayal in Berlin – a small but important part of the Cold War story
The Berlin Tunnel was an Anglo-American eavesdropping operation mounted against Russian-controlled East Berlin in 1955–56. It was a technical and…
Donald Hoffman’s The Case Against Reality is a hard to get your head around
Vibrations, chemicals and light-waves exist in the world; sounds, tastes, smells and colours only seem to. ‘Many sensations which are…
Patti Smith had a bad year in 2016
In the Chinese zodiac, 2016 was the year of the monkey, a trickster year full of the unhappy and the…
Pilferer, paedophile and true great: Gauguin Portraits at the National Gallery reviewed
On 25 November 1895, Camille Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien. He described how he had bumped into his erstwhile…
Circus routine rather than theatre: Noises Off reviewed
Michael Frayn’s backstage comedy, Noises Off, is the theatre’s answer to Trooping the Colour. Everyone agrees that it’s an amazing…
More misogynistic than the original: ENO’s Orpheus in the Underworld reviewed
It’s Act Three of Emma Rice’s new production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Eurydice (Mary Bevan) is trapped…
I was born to be on this Bob Dylan podcast, says Geoff Dyer
Podcasts will soon be like porn. Every interest, desire or idle flicker of curiosity will have been anticipated and catered…
Pure, undiluted genius: Succession reviewed
I have never ever watched a TV series I have enjoyed more than Succession (Now TV). There’s stuff I’d put…
Imagine ZZ Top stuck in a lift with Gary Numan: Sturgill Simpson’s Sound & Fury reviewed
Grade: A– The outlaw country genre has shifted a little over the decades since Waylon and Willie, with each proponent…
Only fitfully funny: Chris Morris’s The Day Shall Come reviewed
The Day Shall Come is a second feature from British satirist Chris Morris and like the first, Four Lions, it…
You’ll be blubbing over a wooden boulder at David Nash’s show at Towner Art Gallery
Call me soppy, but when the credits rolled on ‘Wooden Boulder’, a film made by earth artist David Nash over…
Why Roy Cohn is not one of the world’s most evil men
New York The Roy Cohn documentary Bully. Coward. Victim: the Story of Roy Cohn was successfully screened at the…
What had the chambermaid made of my penis vacuum pump?
Fumbling outside my door in dripping swimming trunks for my room key, I was hailed cheerily by the maid from…
My bid to boost my carbon footprint
Inspired by Harry and Meghan I decided to get on a plane. I hadn’t been anywhere for so long it…
The dark world of Victorian horse racing
Two hours after showing her father, the Marquess of Anglesey, the wedding dress in which she was to marry the…
Bridge
After all the excitement of England making the playoffs in all four events at the World Championships in China, only…
Plates in the sink
‘Chess is a constant struggle between my desire not to lose and my desire not to think.’ I’m fond of…
no. 575
White to play. The final game of the match between Radjabov and Ding. White’s safer king confers a huge advantage,…
Watch the birdie
In Competition No. 3119 you were invited to submit a poem about yellowhammers. This sparrow-sized songbird has inspired poetry from…
2429: Homo
7A can be linked to nine unclued lights (three of two words, one of which repeats 7A) – in five…
to 2426: Her love
The unclued lights relate to SUPERMAN (6D), his alter ego CLARK KENT (26A), nickname (the) MAN OF STEEL (8), planet…
