Britannia Chained

Leader: How to pay for big government

As voters demand more of the state, the state must demand more of its wealthiest.

Letter of the week: Funding the future

A selection of the best letters received from our readers this week. Email [email protected] to have your thoughts voiced…

How David Beckham backed the Qatar World Cup – and got away with it

Beckham inhabits a liminal space between sport and celebrity – it is never quite clear where his benevolence ends…

Yogita Limaye’s Diary: The mercurial Taliban, selling children to survive, and the betrayal of Afghan women

In Kabul, a Taliban spokesman tells me girls were staying home from school of their own accord.

Lea Ypi: “The freedom that liberalism brought was only for some people”

The acclaimed author on growing up in communist Albania, the cost of “shock therapy” and why she’s a “Kantian…

Can the Conservatives save the world for the young despite being a party of the old?

Many think there’s a generational divide in politics – but climate change is one issue we agree on.

The BBC needs to stand up for itself

Director-general Tim Davie should be challenging the charge that the corporation has moved away from impartial reporting, not accepting…

Australia’s Scott Morrison shows that danger lies in the hollow politics of the status quo

Morrison’s climate policy has seen his country replace the US as the standout laggard of the rich world.

Mark Zuckerberg is fooling no one by changing Facebook’s name to Meta

The “metaverse” epitomises Big Tech’s focus on masturbatory ego projects rather than social goods.

How fear makes us human

The late David Graeber’s history of early human societies presents civilisation as a descent from anarchy into servility. But…

Christine Smallwood’s darkly funny novel of a stuck generation

The Life of the Mind smartly observes the lost futures of today’s thirty-somethings.

Your very own Sylvia Plath

An auction of the poet’s private possessions reveals the tension between her work and her personal life.

Reviewed in short: New books by Simon Heffer, Lucy Burns, Warren Ellis and Helen Oyeyemi

Henry “Chips” Channon, The Diaries by Heffer, Larger than an Orange by Burns, Nina Simone’s Gum by Ellis and…

Hogarth and the Continent

How the artist was influenced by European painters – and influenced them in turn.

Pablo Larraín’s Spencer is a bone-headed reassessment of Princess Diana

The grand biopic opts for heavy-handed symbolism over any grounding in reality.

Why are PD James’s Dalgliesh novels so difficult to adapt?

The novelist, an Anglican, understood that the best crime fiction relieves the reader of their own guilt. But her…

How the culture wars began

Jon Ronson’s Things Fell Apart seeks to discover the origins of today’s hyper-polarised political battle lines

What does James Bond eat for lunch?

007 is known for his liquid diet – but he was also a devoted foodie.

Will it be shellfish fed on sewage that finally makes us sick of this government?

I have a deep and sometimes fraught relationship with oysters – filth being dumped into the sea is unlikely…

At my son’s damp student house in Brighton, I’m reminded of the winter of discontent

Though the house seems to me, at my age and level of sensitivity, utterly repugnant, I can see that…

In today’s fickle world, who would be a sports star?

When you rise to the top, success is only fleeting, and when the fall comes you get a kicking.

This England: Thirsty foxes

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

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Edith Widder Q&A: “My Mastermind subject? Sea creatures that make light”

The oceanographer on a volcanic eruption, Nelson Mandela, and advice from Shakespeare.