Joan Bakewell Q&A: “What would make my life better? More of it to come“
The television presenter on Brexit, Beethoven, and meeting Clement Atlee at university.
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France’s new Napoleon
The awful stand-up gig rescued by an obnoxious Stag and his former English teacher
Nothing annoys a self-styled alpha male more than a friend saying: “He’s got you there mate.”
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England Is Mine: the making of Morrissey, or a portrait of the artist as a young wimp?
The film avoids controversy, but it ends up bland in a way that is probably its downfall.
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A good second-hand shop is where the minds of people long dead are made to live again
It is both a testament of decay, of oblivion, and also a kind of limbo.
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Sounds delicious: the food podcasts you should be listening to
It turns out you don’t always need to see and taste meals to make them interesting.
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Mosquitoes, a play that shows sensible mothers don’t necessarily produce capable children
The dialogue in Lucy Kirkwood’s show at the National Theatre is clever, funny and painful.
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The narrator’s profoundly elegiac timbre is the best thing about this Arthur Miller series
The Lure’s Ed Harris stormed past the usual threshold of BBC Radio 4 magnetism.
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In Trust Me, Jodie Whittaker plays an entirely different kind of doctor
The hospital imposter is an excellent dramatic device, playing on our deepest fears in BBC One’s drama.
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Cynically commercial, Atomic Blonde is a total waste of Charlize Theron
David Leitch’s film forgets that a driver is only as good as her vehicle.
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“Robbie Brady’s astonishing late goal takes its place in our personal histories”: A new short story by Sally Rooney
New fiction from the author of Conversations with Friends.
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A Bold and Dangerous Family: the Italian brothers who resisted Mussolini
Caroline Moorehead’s absorbing biography tells the tale of Nello and Carlo Rosselli.
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Stamped from the Beginning charts the uncomfortable history of American racism
Ibram X Kendi offers an un-yielding narrative of racist ideas, violence and harm – but also resistance.
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The City Always Wins: a poetic, intimate debut set in Cairo during the Arab Spring
The novel’s author Omar Robert Hamilton has activism in his blood.
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Why you should watch pop’s best videos
From Charli XCX to Selena Gomez, music television is more wonderful than ever.
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To the Back of Beyond destabilises everything in the most stable of lives
Peter Stamm’s haunting new novel is simple, yet irreducible and mysterious.
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The Last Wolf: Robert Winder’s book examines the elusive concept of Englishness
If English national character is so hard to pin down, could this mean there is no such thing any…
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On its way to lace
A new poem by Craig Raine.
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The Power and the Story: fact, fabrication and the shaping of the modern media
Author John Lloyd is amazed at how Donald Trump has “set about trashing” the practice of journalism.
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The dustman and the doctor: fairness and the student fees debate
The idea that education – all education – should be free is intoxicating and liberating. But there’s a problem.
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What should you do when two Isis suspects are interrogated right before your eyes?
On the ground in Mosul, the terror group’s stronghold is crumbling.
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Blue on blue: the 10 greatest Tory feuds
The party’s war over Europe is nothing new.
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Jupiter in the Élysée: how long can Emmanuel Macron’s good luck last?
Before entering politics, he studied Machiavelli and the art of gaining and holding power. But is the young French…
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Inequality hasn’t risen since the crash but it’s now set to soar
The Conservatives’ £9bn of welfare cuts will reduce family incomes by as much as £3,000 a year.
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In sickness and in health: Stephen McGann on the diseases in his family’s past
The actor’s book is more than the opening up of a family’s secrets. It is a cautionary tale.
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The internet dictionary: what is astroturfing?
Yes, like the fake grass.
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Who is Yuriko Koike, the most powerful woman in Japan?
Tokyo’s ambitious governor, whose supporters wave broccoli in honour of her green slogan.
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Donald Trump’s “brain“ Stephen Miller is also obsessed with Muslims and Mexicans
It would be no exaggeration to call the president’s senior policy adviser an extremist.
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Billy Bragg’s Diary: would Harry Potter have voted for Brexit?
He just looks like a Tory.
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The Conservatives think that Venezuela will hurt Jeremy Corbyn. They’re wrong
Fear of Labour wasn’t enough last time and won’t be enough next time either.
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Mary Beard takes on Twitter, the vanishing Richard Burgon and my sympathy for the baby boomers
The classicist stays polite while being assailed by people with PhDs from the University of Extreme Self-Regard.
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Leader: Venezuela in crisis
The country’s fate is a sharp rebuke to those who lionised it as the home of “21st-century socialism”.
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