Ben Judah: The ruthlessness of Vladimir Putin
How the Russian leader keeps his grip on power.
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Putin vs Isis
Putin vs Isis: Russia’s great game in Syria
Vladimir Putin’s military intervention is less about defeating Isis than about establishing himself as the ultimate counter-revolutionary leader.
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What Jeremy Corbyn can learn from Orwell
Corbyn’s ideas may echo George Orwell’s – but they’d need Orwell’s Britain to work. It’s time Corbyn accepted the…
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“I was killed when I was 27”: the curious afterlife of Terence Trent D’Arby
Terence Trent D’Arby’s 1987 debut album sold a million copies in three days. The music press went mad for…
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Shell-shock symphony: Berg’s Wozzeck – opera’s take on post-traumatic stress disorder
Begun in 1914 and premiered in 1925, Wozzeck has class struggle, poverty and mental health problems as its principal…
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How inequality became the defining issue of the 2016 US presidential campaign
Economic and social inequality is rising, threatening to eclipse even the levels of division seen in the “gilded age”…
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Reclusive novelist Dominic Cooper: what do writers do when the words no longer come?
In 2013, a local paper reported on a strange script chiselled into a stone that had baffled not only…
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The Tories’ aim is to put Labour out of business for good
Rather than merely winning again, the Conservatives are seeking to inflict permanent damage on the opposition.
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The shadow of the Nasty Party hangs over the Tories again
From Theresa May on immigration to Jeremy Hunt on tax credits, senior Conservatives are ruining the leadership’s attempts to…
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Leader: The Tories and social mobility
The imminent cuts to tax credits – given to four and a half million Britons to supplement low-paid work…
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Robots are coming for your job. That might not be bad news
The problem with automation isn’t technology. The problem is capitalism.
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Jeremy Hunt’s kindergarten economics, Thatcher’s explosive lunch and the other side of Denis Healey
Healey, who has died aged 98, persuaded the public that he was a jolly and rather lovable character. That…
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No renaissance for Mr Healey
A reflection on Denis Healey (1917 – 2015) in this piece from the NS archive from 1981.
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Life is tough as a former special adviser, shouting at the Daily Politics in your pants
You vow to do yoga, read fiction, grow stuff – beards, vegetables – but it’s only talk. Before you…
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Why Nasa is right to give up on searching for life on Mars
“Is there life on Mars?” seemed like an epoch-defining question.
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Common’s Confidential: Crosby’s red guard
Lynton Crosby is friendly to Labour only in the manner of a dingo putting a limping kangaroo out of its…
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Windows on the soul: AS Byatt on Simon Schama’s The Face of Britain
Britain’s portraits tell stories of subversion and obsession in a book which reveals something new on every page.
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In defence of cultural appropriation
Our cultures show that we can select who we are and who we want to be – but can…
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Joseph Conrad and the lure of solitude
The sceptical doubt that infuses Conrad’s work – particularly his last great novel, Victory – has to do with…
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Why England’s sports teams are dominated by the privately educated
The proportion of those on the smallest incomes participating in sport has reached a new low.
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Roll up, roll up – it’s football v rugby for yer man in the stands
It’s time to take stock of rugby, and see what us football fans have learned.
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When you receive death threats online, it’s good to know who has your back
To be a woman in the public eye these days, or actually anyone who can operate a Twitter account,…
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The new air strikes on Syria will compel even more angry young men to join the jihad
Jihadists have long operated in the Caucasus and they have been re-energised by the Syrian conflict.
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Scar tissue: Is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara more than the sum of its parts?
Yanagihara’s Booker-shortlisted novel explores abuse but sheds little new light on her subject.
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The Returning Officer: Winchester
Robert Geoffrey Ellis was Tory MP for Wakefield (1922-23 and 1924-29) and Sheffield Ecclesall (1935-45). In between, he was…
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Seven Brief Lessons on Physics makes physics sound like Romantic poetry
With his new book of popular science, Carlo Rovelli has struck gold.
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Chrissie longed to be one of the boys. Unlike us, she didn’t have riot grrrls
Chrissie Hynde has been accused of victim blaming. But her plight seems to me very much the plight of…
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With Close to the Edge, the BBC has made The Only Way Is Essex with wrinkles
A “structured reality” show about pensioners in Bournemouth, plus Unforgotten.
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The Bloody Mary is dead: all hail the Bloody Caesar
This Canadian version of an old standard is a good substitute for dinner.
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The House by the Lake is a history of Germany told in a single house
History, which we learn about as a series of ideological abstractions, is lived concretely – in ordinary houses.
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Archbishop Welby and the hidden price of being Mister Nice Guy
Doubtless Welby’s supporters will find such a description rude to the point of impiousness – but for those of…
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When John Lennon sang like Chopin
Where Bob Dylan fits 45 words into a six-word line, Lennon could be sorcerously expansive, as John Lennon: Verbatim reminds us.
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“Dance on the Mountain”: a new poem by P J Harvey
A snapshot of Kosovo.
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Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways: a subtle study of “economic migration”
Sahota’s Man Booker-shortlisted novel goes to places we would all rather not think about.
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Beasts of No Nation reminds us of fates worse than death
Cary Fukunaga’s latest film is fiercely loyal to the perspective of its young protagonist as he negotiates the horrors…
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Something to live for – a new fridge will be delivered today, some time between nine and six
The fridge has become, literally, unhinged. What now?
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Why the philosophy of people-rating app Peeple is fundamentally flawed
The app claims that “character is destiny”, and that we should be constantly judged based on our past interactions…
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