Why science is failing to alter the future
We have fooled ourselves into thinking that being able to see the future is the same as being able…
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David Bowie
Michael Lewis hits a tipping point
Michael Lewis, the author and journalist highly regarded for his ability to tease human drama out of seemingly mundane…
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The end of Spain’s political consensus
After the Spanish election, forming coalitions is no simple task.
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All sides in Labour want unity – but on whose terms?
Neither Corbyn nor his opponents may be strong enough to triumph, leaving Labour stumbling towards 2020.
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I know something about motherhood – but not as much as my husband
Presenting the child for vaccination, the nurse invariably says, with puzzled face: “Where’s Mummy?” “Oh, that’s easy,” my husband…
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Laurie Penny on David Bowie: let’s give thanks to a man who made it OK to be weird
How do you mourn a legend? You don’t. Not really. The legend continues, a little chip of it in…
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David Bowie: the shifting shaman of the modern age
How the musician came to be a digital presence in the lives of millions.
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Reading the runes of David Bowie’s Blackstar
People have trained themselves to look for the riddles and tricks in Bowie’s music, but this time he was…
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In defence of “bad” Bowie: why his least acclaimed album is my favourite
Tonight was panned by critics. Rolling Stone gave it one star. But it’s the album I return to most often.
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How David Bowie lit up a blacked-out Britain
Bowie became a conduit for a lost generation, reaching those who the 1960s had left behind.
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Kate Mosse on David Bowie, the king of the outcast girls and boys
I’m always suspicious of shared grief for people we’ve never met. So why does Bowie’s death feel so significant?
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“Berlin, January 10th, 2016: Kooks”: A new poem by John Burnside
“A midwinter spring, of sorts, / the day you died. . .”
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A Martian up a ladder throwing paint at a canvas
Bowie never stopped collaborating, never stopped travelling between media, walking through walls with a light-footedness that few have ever…
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Close encounters with the Bromley boy
How a suburban boy from the South East London suburbs turned himself into David Bowie.
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Commons confidential: Poor Momentum
A momentous confusion, the case of Michael “Dagger” Dugher – and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton?
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History is a meeting place
No utopian: the poet Abdulkareem Kasid.
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Alsatian dog syndrome, long-distance working and the Tory “sink” estate scam
It is reassuring that we have a prime minister who returns from his Christmas break invigorated with new ideas.
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When successful investors warn of a global market crash, we should all be nervous
Profits are so thin that the slightest pothole could cause a crash.
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So the banks brought the world to its knees but it’s junior doctors who are holding us to ransom? I don’t buy it
Bob Crow was a bully for securing better pay deals for Tube workers; a CEO who delivers bigger profits…
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If it wants to be a force for radical change, Labour must face up to why it lost
Only Labour can build the national movement needed to challenge David Cameron’s reforms. But doing so means acknowledging where…
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The women bringing new life to TV comedy
Comedy used to be run by middle-aged men making Goons references. But new series Tracey Ullman’s Show and Crashed are a brilliant…
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Tyrant’s rants: imagining the final hours of Muammar Gaddafi
The central figure of The Dictator’s Last Night ends up as a cross between Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Sacha Baron…
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A message for my twin daughters on their eighteenth birthday
All the good advice has been given, so I’m going to turn it around and say thank you.
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Killer instinct: Hou Hsiao-hsien, the greatest film-maker you’ve never heard of
Megan Walsh meets the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien as he takes on wuxia in his acclaimed film The Assassin.
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Why humans find it hard to do away with religion
The new atheists decry religion as a poisonous set of lies. But what if a belief in the supernatural…
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Remembering David Bowie on air
How radio presenters across the country shared anecdotes in memory of the singer.
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Escapee parakeets are taking over London and although I hate their cry it’s their brains I’m most afraid of
It is rather corvid, the ring-neck’s cry – suggestive of an intelligence more knowing than we expect from most…
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Room tries to be universal – but it’s just as trapped as its characters
When the kidnapped mother and son in Room (15) leave captivity, it’s supposed to be a grand metaphor. Yet the film…
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The danger of nostalgia: looking back at 1956
Violence and prejudice is rife in two studies of the pivotal year of 1956.
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“Fascinating”: A new poem by Jeremy Robson
“They were my dad’s I tell him, recalling / how my father loved to savour a cigar after /…
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From Bunyan to the phone hacking scandal: the history of Vanity Fair
At Vanity Fair: From Bunyan to Thackeray by Kirsty Milne takes us from The Pilgrim’s Progress to Condé Nast’s glamorous title.
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Choose your gin and get fressing this winter
Gin has evolved from the home-made 18th-century rotgut that was the scourge of England’s poor to the tipple of colonial…
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I’ve always fantasised about robbing the bank and now my local branch has made it easy
I dislike going to the bank intensely; only, perhaps, not for the reason you might suppose.
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A French memoir of the Holocaust shows the courage of choosing to survive
Marceline Loridan-Ivens’s But You Did Not Come Back is a addressed to her father and tells the story of her time in…
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Anxious in America: On writing the life of Joan Didion
Tracy Daugherty’s biography of Joan Didion is most interesting when it comes to highlighting the complex dynamics inherent in…
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