Glastonbury
Zadie Smith muses on the artist-muse relationship
In an outstanding essay on Lucian Freud and Celia Paul, inspirations for each other, Smith even admits to having offered to model for Freud herself as a teenager
Down with the middle class
I suppose this magazine is probably not the best forum to launch a movement to sweep away the British middle…
Tim Davie shouldn’t quit over Glastonbury
There probably never has been a time when a governing party much liked its MPs. If you are on a…
The political climate at Glastonbury was not especially febrile
Everyone who wasn’t at Glastonbury this year knows exactly what it was like: a seething mass of hatred and rabid…
And now let’s bomb Glastonbury
A small yield nuclear weapon, such as the American W89, dropped on Glastonbury in late June would immediately remove from…
Let Kneecap play
During the Troubles, some 2,500 people were victims of kneecappings – punishment shootings, dished out by paramilitaries, for perceived crimes…
The worst thing Kneecap did? Apologise
Going to Glasto this year with your little tent? I only ask because the average age of people who attend…
Complain all you like but Glastonbury has delivered the goods again
There’s yet to be a Glastonbury line-up that hasn’t provoked a chorus of naysaying. Refrains like ‘looks rubbish. I wouldn’t…
The true valour needed to go on pilgrimage in Britain
Oliver Smith finds sanctity in remote peninsulas and holy islands, but is less impressed by the tacky ephemera that decorate our more accessible shrines
Indie heaven
‘Well, it’s just not Glastonbury, is it?’ said my daughter aggressively, when told that our yurt featured an actual bed,…
Long live the rock dinosaurs!
When the Oldie changed ‘leadership’ a few years back I swooped on the new editor, young Harry Mount, like a…
Zelensky’s peculiar Glastonbury appearance
Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t quite make it onto the Glastonbury line-up posters. Perhaps Michael Eavis, the owner of ever-so Worthy Farm,…
Rock till you drop
What do the following individuals have in common: a political activist from Suffolk; a chartered psychologist from Oxfordshire, who enjoys…
So much lost for so little
In 1536 there were 850 monastic houses in England and Wales; just four years later they were all gone. The…
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Listening to Trees A Crowd, a podcast exploring the ‘56(ish) native trees of the British Isles’, solved one of childhood’s…
Homage to Avalonia
Televising Glastonbury has changed the festival, and in turn transformed television, says Graeme Thomson
How many 999 calls are genuine emergencies?
To debate or not to debate Is Boris Johnson wise to shun TV debates? — Prior to the 2015 Labour…
Rory’s classic mistakes
If Rory Stewart had taken full advantage of his education at Eton and read classics at Oxford rather than PPE,…
Elysian fields
Glastonbury is a model for radical policy reform, says Steve Hilton
Gods and fairytales
The rise of modern paganism – and the persistence of the real thing
All together now
Individualism is dead: we have succumbed to the lure of the crowd
Glorious Glastonbury
‘Charlie. E. Powder,’ said the friendly, helpful man working his way through the crowd during the mindblowing Friday-night headline set…
Greatest show on earth
Yes, I’m sorry, the Stones at Glastonbury really were that good and if you weren’t there I’m afraid you seriously…
