Ali Smith’s Goldsmiths Prize lecture: The novel in the age of Trump
When politics is built on fictions, it’s fiction that can help us get to truth.
By
How May crumbled
Wes Streeting Q&A: “Timmy Mallet came to my school. It was the best day“
The Labour MP talks Optimus Prime, The Only Way is Essex, and the fourth Industrial Revolution.
By
Finally, I understand the point of watching England play football
It is a reflection of the human condition.
By
If I’m no longer scared of the dark, surely that means I don’t fear death
When I switched off the bedside light, everything went black.
By
The food bore told me he was “going Paleo” – what’s the point?
Humankind has come a long way from caveman days.
By
Ten Days That Shook the World is fizzy and fast, but never flippant
BBC Radio 4 dramatises journalist John Reed’s account of the Russian Revolution.
By
An Hour To Catch A Killer is a disturbingly intimate story of murder
When the attacker began blankly spinning his lies in the interview room, you felt only numb.
By
The Meyerowitz Stories: Adam Sandler discovers vulnerability
The film may be produced by Netflix, but it is deeply cinematic.
By
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend mixes farcical plots with surprising emotional realism
Characters boldly sing about their psychological flaws and emotional dependencies.
By
Go, Went, Gone: a profound, beautiful and deeply affecting novel of migration
Jenny Erpenbeck’s book underscores the logical inconsistencies of European border laws.
By
Daniel Mendelsohn’s memoir describes a son’s mission to understand his father
An Odyssey shows that if any subject can dissolve their differences, it is Classics.
By
A Revolution of Feeling traces the history of human emotion
Rachel Hewitt’s book is fuelled by vim and vigour.
By
Espionage thriller Munich explores the ethics of information
Author Robert Harris should know that less is more.
By
Scenes from Life on Earth
A new poem by Kathryn Simmonds.
By
Forgetfulness: the dangers of a modern culture that wages war on its own past
Francis O’Gorman believes the systematic devaluation of the past began in earnest in the 19th century.
By
Islamic State is not beaten and will return
Its message remains as defiant as ever.
By
Six days in Raqqa: inside the battle for Islamic State’s last major stronghold
Suddenly there was a buzzing overhead, followed by two loud explosions. It was an IS drone, dropping grenades.
By
Theresa May is one more crisis away from self destruction
But a contest, when it happens, must be swift.
By
Theresa May: the hollow PM
How the beleagured premier has been left exposed as the Tories are devastated by the Brexit plague.
By
The 1922 Committee: how the Tories’ men in grey suits wield power
The group of Conservative backbenchers can determine a Tory leader’s fate before the electorate has a chance.
By
How to reinvent the welfare state for a new political era
Voters want both freedom and security.
By
Scottish Labour’s Richard Leonard: “I’m too long in the tooth to be a Corbynista”
The frontrunner to succeed Kezia Dugdale talks Brexit, manners and dangerous dogs.
By
Commons Confidential: Jeremy Corbyn goes back to Glastonbury
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
By
The judges who defied the president: why Kenya’s election is being rerun
The supreme court ruling was unprecedented in Africa.
By
Question Time’s new editor needs to create a serious programme for these serious times
Interrogating decision-makers is still what journalism needs to do.
By
In both football and politics, Corbyn has a surprising weakness – loyalty
He might have been a rebel in parliament but he is a loyalist when it comes to his team.
By
How Nobel Prize-winner Richard Thaler gave free-market dogma a makeover
Humans do not always make rational choices.
By
Whatever happened to Theresa May’s politics of the “common good”?
Many in her inner circle were disdainful of libertarian free market dogmas.
By
Leader: Kazuo Ishiguro, Brexit and global Britain
The Nobel Prize-winning author’s strange, restrained fictions are political in the best sense.
By
Are you now, or have you ever been, a centrist?
We need new words to describe the political landscape, but “centrist” is deliberately vague – and therefore useless.
By