What will the cities of the future look like?
Will they be subterranean, to escape extreme heat; or float in the sky, to avoid overcrowding; or abolish streets entirely, like the Line, now under construction in Saudi Arabia?
Blooming marvellous: the year’s best gardening books
Subjects include Catesby’s Natural History, London’s lost green spaces, planting for colour in borders and the complexity of a garden’s ecology38
The fresh hell of Dorothy Parker’s Hollywood
Though well paid as a screenwriter, Parker lampooned Hollywood’s moguls, dubbing MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Merde as she slipped further into alcoholism
Who would be a goalkeeper?
There’s a whiff of hauteur in Robert McCrum’s history of the penalty kick – his great-grandfather’s brainchild of 1891, which proved such a momentous change to football
A quest for retribution: Fire, by John Boyne, reviewed
Freya, a respected consultant in a burns unit, is on a secret mission to destroy as many young boys’ lives as possible, having been raped by teenagers on holiday in Cornwall at the age of 12
South Asia in a time of the breaking of nations
Avinash Paliwal’s gripping tale of espionage opens in 1949, with newly independent India, Pakistan and Burma racked by rivalries in one of the most intricately partitioned areas on Earth
The ambassador’s daughter bent on betrayal
When the young Martha Dodd arrived at the American embassy in Berlin in 1933 she cared nothing about politics. By the time she left four years later, she was a committed Soviet spy
Seeds of hope in the siege of Leningrad
A Russian biologist’s dream of creating the world’s first seed bank is thwarted by Stalin’s paranoia and the Nazi invasion. But the pioneering project remains a potent symbol of hope
Reading the classics should be a joy, not a duty
Edwin Frank’s survey of 20th-century fiction stresses the po-faced seriousness of the great novel. But many masterpieces revel in the ridiculous – or are about nothing at all
One phone call won’t make Putin listen to Scholz
This afternoon, for the first time in nearly two years, the German chancellor Olaf Scholz picked up the phone to…
Democrats don’t need their own Joe Rogan
One of the new cliches of American politics is that progressives need their own Joe Rogan. The comedian turned podcaster…
How corrupt are Britain’s prisons?
Two recently-released prisoners have lifted the lid on corruption and sexual harassment in Britain’s prisons. Beatrice Auty, who was imprisoned…
Spain won’t forgive and forget over Valencia’s deadly floods
The head of the Valencia regional government has just attempted an impossible task – justifying his administration’s conduct before, during…
Is Starmer really proud of this rubber dinghy crackdown?
Hold the front page. The government may have finally smashed part of a people-smuggling gang, or as word-mangling Keir Starmer…
Roman Polanski and the scandal of the Dreyfus Affair
A few days ago, in the suburban surroundings of the Phoenix cinema in Finchley, north London, a major film by…
Non-crime hate incidents are out of control
It’s police overreach season again on free speech and non-crime hate incidents, or NCHIs. On Remembrance Day morning, we had…
Labour’s cynical House of Lords reform
This week, the House of Commons is focusing its attention on proposed reforms to the House of Lords. MPs backed…
Rachel Reeves is turning into Gordon Brown
Rachel Reeves is beginning to look awfully like Gordon Brown. Study the actions of this government so far and you…
There’s nothing worse than an entitled restaurateur
Going to restaurants used to be fun. So much so that in the first two booze-sloshed decades of the 21st…
Kemi Badenoch’s early troubles are no reason to despair
A consensus seems to be forming, with unreasonable speed, that Kemi Badenoch isn’t exactly smashing it at Prime Minister’s Questions.…
I hope Mike Tyson teaches Jake Paul a lesson
Tedious narcissist blowhard Jake Paul will fight Mike Tyson on Saturday in a meaningless freakshow in Texas that will likely…
I have no time for Radio Four’s dross
I switched the radio on in my car today and it went straight to the BBC World at One on…
What has Labour got against beautiful buildings?
Is an anti-beauty coalition building in the heart of government? Back in August, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local…
Parliament shells out £900k on cobblestones
Whether it’s falling masonry or rats, staff in the Houses of Parliament have to put up with a lot in…
Resignations alone won’t fix the Church of England
Will there be more resignations following the departure of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury? The Church is, as on…
