Making the best of an imperfect world: a vision of the future from my hospital bed
What's needed is not top-down reform, but continuous improvement from the bottom up
Here come the Pirates!
The Brussels establishment see their diverse new opponents as just a bunch of extremists. They won't know what's hit them
Unpacking in Bangkok
And then a dozen Muddy miraculous hares Sprang out of the suitcase, Bounding round and round The hotel suite, Drumming…
Russia’s missing memorial
One of the 20th century's great crimes is still awaiting a fitting memorial
China: Chinese breakaway
How must our recipes appear to the inheritors of thousands of years of tradition?
Eat, drink and be merry…
Nick Groom's The Seasons is an elegy to a time when we lived according to the farming and religious cycles — and a plea for us to attend village festivals and bonfire nights
Between tenderness and rage
Philip Roth is a master of voices, shows Claudia Roth Pierpont in Roth Unbound. The biography works because she is one too
Forgiveness
The bunting was hardly down, and the bones of the feast hardly buried in sand, when the prodigal son started…
The healing art
Art can heal, argue Alain de Botton and John Armstrong in Art as Therapy. If they had their way the Tate Modern would have a 'Gallery of Suffering' and a 'Gallery of Compassion'
Blazing saddles
Anjelica Huston recounts her interesting childhood, often beautifully, in A Story Lately Told
Reds under the beds
Leonardo Padura's The Man Who Loved Dogs is an atmospheric noir on how the revolutionary was killed by an ice-pick, after other murder attempts
A comedy of manners
The story is negligible and the denouement ridiculous, but Susanna Johnston's Lettice & Victoria will have you chuckling
The food of love
With stories by Somerset Maugham and Nadine Gordimer, Love Duet is a compelling anthology by Christopher Ondaatje of how we find love — and ourselves — in music
Jumble of taste
You'll find Bacon, Lowry and a few superb artefacts, but mostly this jumble of a show is like visiting a large country house that's fallen on hard times
Major to minor
The most talented of the Bach family (after his father), anything could happen if Radio 3 gets behind him
The year in opera
Last year was a good year only for colleges of music, Opera North, The Welsh National Opera — and Wagner
Size matters
Plus: When Dickens is a hippie with a goatee, and Tiny Tim's crutch turns into an all-American prop (not a machine gun)
