A Dream of Britain

Leader: The return of stagflation

Rather than poorly targeted tax cuts, the UK needs a more generous welfare state to protect individuals from the…

Letter of the week: Europe’s new long game

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Inside the mental health epidemic among teenage girls

Our girls are struggling. How can we help?

“Unity is hard to sustain when you’re being bombed”: Lindsey Hilsum’s diary from Ukraine

In war, most people will save their own skin and that of their family before helping others.

Why Thomas Piketty is optimistic about the left’s future

The French economist on his new book, the living standards crisis and why the “historical movement towards equality” will…

As a unified sense of British nationhood fades, we must ask: what is England?

As the UK fragments, we are experiencing a reawakening of English national consciousness.

Don’t let the Treasury sugarcoat it: we are about to undergo global economic shock

Do Rishi Sunak’s invocations of “resilience” really rise to the moment?

Putin’s war risks a “clash of civilisations” – the West must not fall into his trap

The realities of the world today cannot be adequately understood through a civilisational prism.

There can be no more illusions about the nature of Putin’s rule – he is a war criminal

During the past 22 years the Russian president has invaded Georgia, Ukraine and Crimea, yet Western leaders still thought…

United on Ukraine, Nato powers now see the world from Warsaw’s point of view

Vladimir Putin’s war is transforming an array of old arguments among the Western allies – over Russia and Turkey,…

The Kremlin’s illegal war stresses the need for all nations to stand up for democracy

Western governments must demonstrate that their values – including vigorous, open debate – are being prioritised at home as…

The sunny national story conjured by the 2012 London Olympics has clouded over

The turbulent and toxic political decade that followed the Games has exploded any illusion of British unity.

Day and age

A new short story by Ali Smith, the acclaimed author of the Seasonal Quartet.

Lucy Easthope reflects on life after catastrophe

The author reveals how the way we recover from disaster goes to the heart of what it means to…

The NS Poem: Pennies from Heaven

A new poem by Hugo Williams.

Reviewed in short: New books from Brian Brivati, Anne Tyler, Helen Mort and Michelle Drouin

Losing Afghanistan by Brivati, French Braid by Tyler, A Line Above the Sky by Mort and Out of Touch…

Mansplaining Carrie Johnson

Michael Ashcroft’s heavy-breathing biography of Mrs Boris Johnson is deeply revealing – of its author and his tribe of…

Literature under Xi Jinping

Chinese fiction is booming, but authors cannot escape the regime’s tightening grip.

Lessons from the wrong end of a fox hunt

One of the UK’s largest remaining predators, with a reputation for cruelty and cunning: the Linlithgow and Stirlingshire Hunt’s…

I don’t want to tick the box that says “Other. Please explain”

The government wants me to squeeze myself into a category, so it knows where I belong.

My dreams were deemed “unrealistic”. But your background shouldn’t determine your future

We all have aspirations. We must to reject the idea that certain opportunities are only for certain kinds of…

My therapist couldn’t see how class shapes lives

I didn’t need to be analysed – I needed to be fed.

We don’t need “a way out” – we need ways in

I wrote in the silence, filled my children’s world with stories. But that was never “real writing” because people like…

In 1990s Scotland, our teachers taught us nothing we could relate to

Can you make a 16-year-old, fresh off a weekend of cheap stimulants and Dutch techno, sit down on Monday…

A tale of two sisters and the eleven-plus

It was results day and the news was starting to sink in. I had passed my eleven-plus. My sister…

In Cumbria, gay men are outnumbered by sheep

But in the homophobic 1980s, this was no joke.

I’m not asking if I can take a seat at the table. I am demanding you move

When I was just a snot-nosed kid, I failed my eleven-plus. And so, my life changed.

I’m proud to be from Bradford – but it has cost me

I have a love-hate relationship with being northern.

The spectre of Grenfell haunts my family’s area

Growing up in inner-city London, I know that the fire was a manifestation of decades of systemic contempt for…

How John Aldridge created a rural idyll in north Essex

The artist neither chased fame nor tired of his small patch of England.

The Worst Person in the World is an exuberant portrait of a young woman flailing as she approaches 30

The third instalment in Joachim Trier’s Oslo trilogy is warm and fast-moving, with a whiff of the pop promo…

I can’t understand the appeal of Bridgerton

Terrible dialogue, repetitive plots, preposterous wigs. Why on earth is this candy-coloured drivel so popular?

The legends and folklore of Alderley Edge

In a new BBC Radio 4 documentary, Archaeology of a Storyteller, Alan Garner explores the history of the area…

Our diets are international, but at the breakfast table, Britishness reigns

The fry-up occupies a special place in the national psyche – survey after survey names the cooked breakfast as…

Like many privileged migrants, I came here because of love

I feel I should be more ashamed of this government than people who grew up in Britain because I…

A publicist asks if I’m ready for the weekend. I ask myself what that involves

Promotional emails that vie for critics’ attention are resorting to ever-more baffling tactics.

This England: Whiskey on tap

This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain…

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Neil Gaiman Q&A: “As long as there’s a Tardis, all’s right with the world”

The author discusses his favourite unflappable literary characters, his love of the Isle of Skye and Doctor Who.