Combat Zone

The new special relationship

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump may together upend what remains of the current global order.

Letter of the week: Rebalancing our debts

Write to [email protected] to have your thoughts voiced in the New Statesman magazine.

Globetrotting Starmer’s shrewd out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach

Your daily dose of gossip from around Westminster.

Ireland’s liberal centre conceals something darker

Who will represent the country’s fragmented edges?

Inside Gary Lineker’s Match of the Day exit

Also this week: keeping shrimp and a new role for Hugh Grant.

Samantha Harvey: “Orbital isn’t the kind of book that normally wins the Booker”

The day after winning the prize, the British author discusses choosing to write a story set in space, climate…

The UK’s broken system makes losers of us all

Today’s welfare state asks for and confirms people’s incapacity to work – not their ability to do so.

The Democrats’ working-class problem

Figures in the party who speak on behalf of America’s workers – like Senator Chris Murphy – are few.…

Will staff go on strike to block the Observer sale?

Bosses may be weighing plans to jettison the Sunday paper against potential disruption to the global Guardian brand.

Biden’s missiles won’t save Ukraine

The West has failed to agree on a war goal since the start of the war.

Assisted dying advocates have much to learn from the legalisation of abortion

The two proposals are taking a strikingly similar route through parliament.

Jordan Peterson’s prophecies

The Canadian thinker’s self-made deity is a symptom of the modern Western malady.

In praise of herd mentality

The best crowds are joyful expressions of democracy and belonging. So why do we fear them so much?

Chris Hoy’s race against time

The Olympic cyclist’s memoir All that Matters reflects on the terminal cancer diagnosis that tested his resilience to the…

From Jonathan Coe to Joan Smith: new books reviewed in short

Also featuring Eurotrash by Christian Kracht and Every Valley by Charles King.

Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall: the best he’s been in years

This Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, more theatre piece than rock concert, is marked by a new polish.

Wicked is a super-sized, elaborate and hip hop-influenced take on the musical

The origin story of The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West arrives two decades after the stage…

Anthony Horowitz’s Moonflower Murders is a delicious buffet of detective-story Englishness

Blood stains, Battenberg cakes and a brilliant older woman – what a treat this series is.

Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy makes for an inventive, genre-expanding ballet

This futuristic cocktail from the Royal Opera House is true to the spirit of Atwood’s novels.

The paradoxes of Frank Auerbach

The painter, who has died at the age of 93, was defined by his surfaces, but unconcerned with exteriors.

Finding gifts for gardeners should be easy

But most of what we want can’t be bought.

Why Trump’s Bitcoin boom is a fake

I have no idea what will happen to cryptocurrencies – and neither does anyone else.

A surprise cash infusion has the feel of a religious experience

I am relieved of the incessant, humiliating nag of being broke for the rest of the month.

I started pottery. I knew I’d be rubbish

But that was the whole point.

This England: Light-ening the mood

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

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Mackenzie Crook Q&A: “I’ve often been happy but happiest is yet to come”

The actor on Nirvana, people who hate dogs, and the magic of Dickens.