Killing jokes: the two plays which are making bad taste delicious
Dinner With Saddam and Hangmen dare to put real people, and ideology, into their brands of dark farce.
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Revenge of the Left
Where are all the people going?
In a new wave of repression under the Sisi regime, Egyptians are being forcibly disappeared.
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The opponents of Jeremy Corbyn are running out of road
The Corbyn insurgency has opened up a chasm on the left. His opponents may have to accept that Labour…
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The day the earth stopped
Ed Miliband’s confidant and former speechwriter recalls the terrible shock of election night and tries to make sense of…
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Jeremy Corbyn interview: the leader strikes back
Labour’s head on scrapping the benefit cap, Trident, military coup attempts, mandatory reselection and piggate.
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Politicians’ privates, the Daily Mail’s gentility and Cameron’s “declinable offer” to Ashcroft
What a strange country. Most of us associate pigs with bacon and sausages but Corbyn won’t eat them, while…
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Leader: Corbyn asserts his authority
The Labour leader has reminded colleagues that he won a resounding mandate, which will allow him to dictate policy…
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Jeremy Corbyn has given hope to my generation. Please don’t let the cynics take it away
It’s easy to be embarrassed about your idealism – especially when the mainstream media have an amazing ability to make…
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Let’s sing the praises of the Greeks
Greeks bearing gifts? Go into a Corfiot restaurant today and your meal will invariably be rounded off with a…
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Alex Ferguson: from gaffer to leadership guru
Since retiring in 2013, the storied former Manchester United manager has reinvented himself as something of a guru of…
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Why Jeremy Corbyn should be drawn as a Jacobin in the French Revolution
On the “misérables of the left”, and Vicky, the great NS cartoonist.
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How to curate the human fate
It’s hard to know whether calls for “urgent debates” actually work – especially as people are already doing it.
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In May, the country embraced austerity. But what happens when it starts hitting the sharp-elbowed middle class?
The landscape over the next five years is different. More of us will feel the pain, even though many…
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David Cameron and the art of the toe-touch
46 minutes at a camp in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley – it’s the Downing Street toe-touch, just enough to be…
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Stealing lunches, offending Bananarama fans, and my own personal Armando Iannucci
“Does it feel like The Thick of It?” my old schoolfriend wants to know. He’s not the first to ask.
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In the valley of death
Labour and the disintegration of social democracy.
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From Seeger to psychonauts: how pop does protest
Comment pieces would have you believe that protest music is dead. Matthew Collin’s front-line dispatches prove otherwise.
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The Returning Officer: Rusholme
The shipowner Robert Stoker won Manchester Rusholme in the 1918 election but died less than a year later. John…
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Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth manages to be both heightened and lived-in
The Australian director might appear arrogant by applying so early in his career for membership of the exclusive Macbeth Movie…
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The Blairites were even on-message about their lunch choices, so thank god for big-haired Mrs Prescott
The reason I think John Prescott is great is that he is married to Pauline. The woman is a goddess.
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“Chariots of Fire meets Cool Runnings?”: The history of a bobsled team
Andy Bull’s Speed Kings is about the 1932 American Olympic bobsled team – and reminds us how mortality underlines all sport.
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Shifting sands: The Loney is a novel of “eerie England”
The more interconnected we become, the more detached we are from the soil that spawned us – and the…
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Finally my personalised spoon from Kellogg’s® has turned up – and it’s way better than I thought
Then, upon my return, there it was! A visitation! A miracle! What a joy it is to be alive…
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Quiet carriage, window seat, forward facing
It’s not the best way to see the land, travelling at this speed – it never was: walking has always…
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Twitter is still the warm hearth of the internet – shame we have to censor ourselves . . .
I don’t know why it took Dermot O’Leary reading out my tweet to make me realise that everything I…
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Guy Burgess, the Cambridge spy who bet on a Soviet future
As Britain’s imperial elite dissolved, the charming double agent clung to his precious badge of identity: an Old Etonian tie.
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Midwinter of the Spirit is a great blend of serious acting and a truly potty script
It turns out that rural Herefordshire is a veritable hotbed of satanic activity.
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Hate thy neighbour: the war crime the Nazis didn’t commit
It is hardly possible to exaggerate the guilt of the Nazi regime, but not all of the atrocities committed…
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The Italian psychiatrist who ended the age of the mental asylum
As John Foot makes clear in his fascinating account of the life and times of Franco Basaglia, Italy’s “anti-institutional”…
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Matthew Spender’s dreams from his father
Stephen Spender’s is a life well documented. Now his son has written about him.
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New polling data shows the challenge facing Jeremy Corbyn
Exclusive YouGov research for the New Statesman shows how Corbyn’s support base crucially differs from Labour’s target voters.
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The daughter’s first tattoo: a battle of wills, and memories of a Microsoft flight simulator
The Girl has outmanoeuvred me yet again, but then again I told my children that my main job as…
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“Burying the soldier”: a new poem by Declan Ryan
*** Declan Ryan was born in Mayo, Ireland, and lives in London. A pamphlet of his poems was published…
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There’s no such thing as a Celt – that’s why we had to invent them
Celts: Art and Identity shows how Celtic identity was made, not born.
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Juliet Jacques’ memoir Trans is not a comfortable read – nothing this honest could be
Trans challenges us all, no matter what our gender.
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We live in a volatile age of post-truth politics – and so Brexit cannot be ruled out
In many ways, the “Britain Out” campaign will sound a lot like an SNP tribute band – or a…
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A very sweet boy: the last days of James Dean
James Dean: the Last Ten Weeks on BBC Radio 2.
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The young Chekhov: a comedian in spite of himself
The Prank: the Best of Young Chekhov reveals how Anton Chekhov developed from jobbing hack to master of the short…
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