Books
Rushdie on how the best magical realism transcends fantasy
Ask the man in the street to quote a line from one of Salman Rushdie’s novels, and he might struggle.…
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’: Sophie Calle interviewed
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’ Thus Sophie Calle objected to the first line of…
Comedy of the blackest kind: Boy Parts, at Soho Theatre, reviewed
There’s something mesmerising about watching a good mimic. And Aimée Kelly, who plays fetish photographer Irina Sturges in Soho Theatre’s…
On the trail of Roman Turkey with Don McCullin
Barnaby Rogerson on how his collaboration with a great photographer has brought the ancient world very close
Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter
Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter
In praise of goths – the most enduring of pop subcultures
Michael Hann on the most enduring of pop subcultures
The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism
The vandals have come for Roald Dahl. His books for children are to be cleansed of their ‘offensive’ content. Sensitivity…
The art of menus
Jonathan Meades on the art of menus
I’m on Andrew Doyle’s side – for now
I’ve agreed to interview the author and journalist Andrew Doyle about his new book at the Conservative party conference –…
What young Ukrainians will learn from reading Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth’s writing about interwar Europe speaks to present-day Ukraine
Salman Rushdie overcame his fear
After Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Muslims to kill him for publishing The Satanic Verses in 1989, Julian Barnes gave Salman Rushdie…
What we can all learn from Jim Corbett’s tiger tales
What we can learn from Jim Corbett’s big-cat tales
The perfect pairing of books and wine
In the West End of London there is an alley which insinuates its way between the Charing Cross Road and…
The endless tiny errors of the NHS
I wrote recently elsewhere about Jeremy Hunt’s good new book examining unnecessary deaths in the NHS. Someone should write a…
My Sally Rooney conversion
I tried to dislike the writing of Sally Rooney. But I failed. I retain some resistance to Sally Rooney the…
‘I came, I saw, I scribbled’: Shane MacGowan on Bob Dylan, angels and his lifelong love of art
Graeme Thomson talks to former Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan about his first art folio
The chief characteristic so far has been nervousness: Chivalry reviewed
Chivalry – written by and starring Sarah Solemani and Steve Coogan – is a comedy drama about post-#MeToo Hollywood life.…
A wonderfully unguarded podcast about the last bohemians
Ordinarily, if a podcast purports to be revelatory, you can assume it is anything but. There’s a glut of programmes…
The cult of sensitivity
I was extra pleased to have swerved the modern curse that is Wordle when I read that ‘sensitive’ words have…
The books that made me who I am
Gstaad This is my last week in the Alps and I’m trying to get it all in – skiing, cross-country,…
Some of the best social commentary around: Celebrity Book Club with Steven & Lily reviewed
When I was ten years old I had a babysitter who was a beautiful graduate student at an Ivy League…
In praise of the Dome
We should learn to love our turn-of-the-millennium architecture, says Helen Barrett, starting with the Dome
Why don't I come with a trigger warning?
Last week brought the news that some universities have attached more ‘trigger warnings’ to certain books, concerned that students may…
