prostitution
Washed up in Istanbul: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, by Elif Shafak, reviewed
Elif Shafak once described Istanbul as a set of matryoshka dolls: a place where anything was possible. As with much…
The gambler and the hooker: Awful Beauty, by Andrei Navrozov, reviewed
This book — the title is from Pasternak —is billed as ‘literary fiction’. The narrator, a Russian gambler and drinker…
I rented out my home. The tenants turned it into a brothel
I had been in Los Angeles for less than a month when I received the call from a concerned neighbour…
Mothers’ ruin
At the heart of Basic Instincts, the new exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London, is an extraordinarily powerful painting…
Letters
In defence of General Lee Sir: In your leader ‘America’s identity crisis’ (19 August) you state that ‘When General Lee…
The ‘sex worker’ myth
In the midst of all the outrage about modern-day slavery, usually vulnerable men forced into manual labour, there is actually…
'Wicked old Paris of the Orient': a portrait of 1930s Shanghai
Here’s the Mandarin for ooh-la-la! As Taras Grescoe, a respected Canadian writer of nonfiction, shows in this marvellous, microscopically descriptive…
Sorry, but saying ‘sex worker’ won’t lift the stigma
‘Of course,’ said my husband in his worst smirky way, as though waiting for an appreciative chuckle, ‘as soon as…
Modern Italy’s heart of darkness
Valerio Varesi, the Turin-born crime writer, displays a typically Italian interest (I would say) in conspiracy theory. The Italian term…
China’s brutal one-child policy will be catastrophic for us all
Mei Fong tells the routine story of a girl who managed to conceal an illegal pregnancy until the baby was…
How they tried (and failed) to make ‘La Marseillaise’ nicer
Friendly words England football fans sang ‘La Marseillaise’ in a friendly match at Wembley. The anthem has not always been…
Bob Monkhouse, John Lennon and prostitution: Lloyd Evans’s Edinburgh Fringe picks
In the clammy shadows of Cowgate I was leafleted by a chubby beauty wearing all-leather fetish gear. ‘Hi! Want to…
Sex and squalor in San Francisco
Frog Music begins with a crime against a young mother, committed in a tiny space. Unlike Emma Donoghue’s bestselling novel…
Spectator letters: Bereaved parents against press regulation, and a defence of Tony Benn
Why we need a free press Sir: As bereaved parents and (to borrow from some signatories of last week’s advertisement)…
Where to open your brothel: an international comparison
The best places to open a brothel The Commons all-party group on prostitution has called for a Scandinavian-style law where…
Hogarth and the harlots of Covent Garden were many things, but they weren't 'bohemians'
It was Hazlitt who said of Hogarth that his pictures ‘breathe a certain close, greasy, tavern air’, and the same…
How to avoid bankers in your nativity scene
In the vast Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore between Siena and Rome, the cycle of frescoes depicting the life…
The Girl Who Loved Camellias, by Julie Kavanagh - review
Verdi’s La Traviata is the story of a courtesan who is redeemed when she gives up the man she loves…
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