Sex

Ambitious, bold and confusing: BBC4’s Corridors of Power – Should America Police the World? reviewed

10 August 2024 9:00 am

Narrated by Meryl Streep, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? announced the scale of its ambition straight away.…

Surprise package: Tackle!, by Jilly Cooper, reviewed

16 December 2023 9:00 am

Rupert Campbell-Black (‘still Nirvana to most women’) decides to buy a football club – to the amazement of Rutshire, and no doubt Cooper’s devoted readers

A strong whiff of goodbyes: The Pole and Other Stories, by J.M. Coetzee, reviewed

9 December 2023 9:00 am

‘The cogs are seizing up, the lights are going out.’ As Elizabeth Costello clears her desk in this collection of stories, we feel that Coetzee may be doing the same

The inequality of sex

23 September 2023 9:00 am

As we all shroud ourselves in grief at being unable to watch Russell Brand any more on terrestrial television stations,…

Horribly described sex: The Last Chairlift, by John Irving, reviewed

22 October 2022 9:00 am

Some time ago I was a guest at a book festival in France where we were invited to dinner in…

A complex, driven, unhappy man: the truth about John le Carré

15 October 2022 9:00 am

Adam Sisman on the private life of John le Carré, revealed in letters and a kiss-and-tell

Peta, Lysistrata and the comedy of a sex strike

1 October 2022 9:00 am

The German branch of the ‘green’ organisation Peta (‘People for the ethical treatment of animals’) is demanding that, until men…

Liberté, égalité, nudité: France’s new sexual politics

13 August 2022 9:00 am

France’s new sexual politics

Why it has to be Kemi

16 July 2022 9:00 am

Have you considered a career in whoring? It can be very rewarding, apparently – especially financially. World’s oldest profession and…

The delights of two-timing

9 July 2022 9:00 am

Looking back and trying to choose just one out of those incomparably bewitching women of one’s youth can be tricky.…

Beware the sex party bores

2 July 2022 9:00 am

You know you’re getting old when your friends start going to sex parties. In our twenties, there were parties, and…

It’s wholly impossible to look away: Good Luck to You, Leo Grande reviewed

18 June 2022 9:00 am

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande stars Emma Thompson as a retired, widowed religious education teacher in her sixties who…

A flawed utopia: The Men, by Sandra Newman, reviewed

4 June 2022 9:00 am

The problem for feminism is men. Not, specifically, in the sense that men are the source of women’s problems, although…

A child’s eye view: Fight Night, by Miriam Toews, reviewed

28 May 2022 9:00 am

Writing from a child’s point of view is a daredevil act that Miriam Toews raises the stakes on in her…

Tina: the drug devastating the gay community

26 March 2022 9:00 am

The ‘chemsex’ drug devastating the gay community

This be the curse: Philip Larkin’s big problem

12 March 2022 9:00 am

Philip Larkin’s big problem

Women don't 'consent' to their own deaths

16 November 2021 5:30 am

A ruling by the Court of Appeal last week has further enshrined the notion that women can consent to their…

The grim reality of gender reassignment

14 November 2021 9:17 am

Lisa Littman, a doctor and researcher, recently surveyed ‘detransitioners’ — people who thought they were transgender then changed their minds.…

Why can't men write about sex?

27 September 2021 9:04 pm

Not long ago I was a regular Tinder user. Having heard that gingers were romantically incompatible, I decided to mix…

Foucault was shielded from scandal by French reverence for intellectuals

31 July 2021 9:00 am

Consider the hare and the hyena. The hare, Clement of Alexandria told readers of his 2nd-century sexual self-help manual Paedagogus,…

New Zealand's transgender debate is turning nasty

14 July 2021 7:25 pm

New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. But now,…

A sex education from Aristophanes

5 June 2021 9:00 am

The publication of the new Cambridge Greek Lexicon reminded the comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes of her frustrations at school,…

Sun, sex and acid: Thom Gunn in California

1 May 2021 9:00 am

San Francisco is a fantastic place… it’s terribly sunny… I am having a splendid hedonistic time here… I find myself…

Do schools really have a problem with sexual violence?

10 April 2021 9:00 am

Schools and the problem of ‘rape culture’

The fossil-hunting is more interesting than the sex: Ammonite reviewed

27 March 2021 9:00 am

Ammonite is writer-director Francis Lee’s second film after God’s Own Country, one of the best films of 2017, and possibly…