Drugs
Britain’s cities are descending into a San Francisco-style nightmare
One morning a few months ago I was walking past St James’s Park station when a dishevelled man with his…
The inconvenient truth about cannabis and mental illness
Mash’s older brother was the same age as Anthony Williams when he slaughtered a stranger in a brutal and random…
Stench of failure: Britain’s shameful surrender in the war on drugs
The New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was that rare figure in politics – a progressive who followed the facts.…
Unhappy band of brothers: the Beach Boys’ story
The quintessential Californian band who sang of sun, sand and surfing had, like the Golden State itself, a dark side as well as light
Letters: the Church of England still has something meaningful to say
Moscow mule Sir: While visiting Russia, James Delingpole learned from the patriarchate’s press officer that under communism the Russian Church…
Sebastian Faulks looks back on youth and lost idealism
The novelist describes key moments in his life from boarding school onwards in essays originally intended to discuss ‘the things that have meant the most to me’
It was drug addiction that killed for Elvis, not his greedy manager
‘Colonel’ Tom Parker may have struck a hard bargain to fund his compulsive gambling habit, but his devotion to Presley was total, says Peter Guralnick
Adrift in the world: My Sister and Other Lovers, by Esther Freud, reviewed
A sequel to Hideous Kinky sees the two sisters Lucy and Bea, still close to their bohemian mother, trying (and failing) to negotiate life on their own terms as adults
My son took drugs – and they were mine
The weekend before last, I came home from walking the dog at about noon to find Caroline asleep in bed.…
The sickness at the heart of boxing
After 30 years as a boxing correspondent, Donald McRae has seen enough, angered by the lies, dope, inadequate safety protocols and lure of Saudi sponsorship
Nazis, killer dogs and weird sex: Empty Wigs, by Jonathan Meades, reviewed
Meades’s 1,000-page doorstopper is also vast in scope, containing 19 overlapping stories of a family scattered through time and space, and their role in a variety of nefarious goings-on
Bad vibrations: Lazarus Man, by Richard Price, reviewed
Shudderings from a subway extension in Harlem causes a tenement building to collapse, killing six people and leading to many missing in this cinematic thriller
Bad air days: Savage Theories, by Pola Oloixarac, reviewed
University students immersed in drug-and-group-sex and online gaming reveal the dark side of Buenos Aires
Avoids the breathless hype of so many podcasts: Finding Mr Fox reviewed
We are all surely familiar with those stories of naive young Brits who travel abroad and are persuaded by a…
The dark truth about Hollywood assistants
Anew stop has been added to the map of Movie Star Homes and Crime Scenes, on sale at LAX airport:…
How ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ plays tricks with the mind
First published in 1798, Coleridge’s masterpiece, about a man obsessed with retelling his story, has obsessed readers ever since, because it never offers up closure
An unlikely comeback: Rare Singles, by Benjamin Myers, reviewed
Dinah, a soul aficionado from Scarborough, persuades the forgotten elderly singer ‘Bucky’ Bronco to be guest of honour at a special concert. But will it all be hugely embarrassing?
Dedicated to debauchery: the life of Thom Gunn
Even the most liberal-minded reader might be surprised by the amount of crack cocaine, LSD, alcohol and casual sex the poet indulged over the course of 50 years
How we became addicted to vaping
For those of us with a poor grasp of time, who can still recall when a night at the pub…
Wales is facing a US-style opioid crisis
In Europe at the end of the Noughties, the problem drug was krokodil. The semi-synthetic, necrosis-causing alternative to heroin was…
London’s dark underbelly: Caledonian Road, by Andrew O’Hagan, reviewed
With its vast cast and twisting plot, O’Hagan’s complex novel feels as busy and noisy as the north London thoroughfare of its title
How Liverpool soon outgrew the Beatles
For the bands playing at Eric’s, the celebrated Merseyside punk club of the late 1970s, even to own a Beatles record was considered embarrassing
The view from the lab
The neuroscientist Camilla Nord places considerable emphasis on scanning technology, but has disappointingly little to suggest in the way of effective new treatments
