Patti Smith grows old too gracefully
According to her memoir M Train, the high priestess of punk now lives a quiet life, watching ITV3 and feeding the cat
Was Steve Jobs really a genius?
Danny Boyle’s biopic is well made and the performances are ace but the film doesn’t know what it wants to say about the Apple CEO
The caliphate strikes back
The downing of the Russian airliner shows its potential to cause havoc on a global scale
John Paul Stapp: the fastest man on earth, who saved millions
The hero of Craig Ryan’s biography not only pioneered manned space flight but also the compulsory use of seatbelts, saving more lives than anyone in history
The answer for sensible, moderate Labour folk is simple. Just leave
They won’t shift Jeremy Corbyn and know that almost everybody in Britain who might vote for him already has
Lessons in jargon
Teachers’ growing addiction to acronyms alienates parents and pushes complex questions into ready-made pigeonholes
Corbyn, Nero and the Bomb
Does a ruler’s weakness matter if he has the right advisers? Maybe not at first…
How did this plotless goon-show wind up at the Royal Court?
Plus: if you can digest three hours of literary froth, you’ll find plenty to enjoy in the Olivier’s new As You Like It
If the world economy crashes again, blame the central bankers
Plus: the changing world of money-broking; readers’ experiences of small business banking; bitcoin
A soothing Negroni for la dolce vita
Stephen Bayley celebrates the Second Cocktail Age with three sumptuous new books on the best way to mix spirits
The war on pensioners
The average pensioner still has an income 25 per cent below the average worker. You wouldn’t guess that from the media
Spying and potting
Plus: The Last Kingdom doesn’t have nearly enough dragons or tits, and why I love BBC2’s The Great British Pottery Throw Down
Bridge
The EBU’s Premier League takes place over three weekends and decides who will represent England in next year’s Camrose (home…
From the archives: the liberty of the battlefield
Returning soldiers will never be satisfied by humdrum urban occupations
Letters
Plus: Ukraine is not our war; unconventional threats to come; creativity, luvvies and vulgarians
Jonathan Coe’s raucous social satire smoulders with anger behind the fun
Number 11 is a bitter exposé of modern materialistic Britain — glued to sadistic reality TV in luxury basement conversions
Send in the clones
Prized polo ponies are already being reborn. It won’t be long before this is mass-market technology
Bach breaking
Plus: why are so many podcasts American? Is it because of the stranglehold that Radio 4 has on the British market?
Sporting chance
I was not quite sure whether to be annoyed or relieved about the recent High Court decision not to recognise…
An elegy for Concorde, the most beautiful airliner of all time, that died aged 27
Patrick Skene Catling recalls blissful supersonic flights—before the age of terrorism, and when newspapers still paid travel expenses
No. 387
White to play. This position is a variation from A.Muzychuk-Dzagnidze, Monaco 2015. How can White finish off with a classic…
Here’s what’s wrong with the ‘public sector ethos’
It is a cultural meme that public service workers have a calling rather than just a job, and that money shouldn’t loom large