Italy in the wake of coronavirus
Our writer travels from Berlin to Naples by train and discovers that the pandemic has brought out the best…
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Summer special
Summer reflection: Call of the flycatcher
These are not eye-catching creatures. Field guides often describe them as “undistinguished”. But, in this unfamiliar and far from…
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My near-death experience on a Covid-19 ward
Six days after I was supposed to die, I went home – and though I had only been gone…
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What it means to be a hero
Acts of courage in the age of Covid-19.
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Escaping the nightmare of history and learning to love Germany
Many of the author’s family perished in the Holocaust and his parents viewed Germany with great suspicion. But today…
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The only girl in the league
As a child our writer dreamed of being a professional footballer, but she always wanted to play not with…
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Nicola Sturgeon: Britain’s most powerful woman
The First Minister, who turned 50 this month, has had a good crisis and the SNP is surging in…
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No wealth but life: the conservative origins of English socialism
How our writer was prompted to reflect on the ideology’s beginnings, after the experience of life in lockdown exposed the legacy of…
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Why Children of Men haunts the present moment
How Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 dystopian masterpiece became the cultural exemplum of apocalypse, and a cardinal citation in the time…
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How we live now
Deborah Levy, Ben Okri, Ahdaf Soueif and more explore how their lives have changed since the beginning of the…
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The greats outdoors: how Caspar David Friedrich searched the German landscape for reflections of his soul
How Friedrich’s late masterpiece, The Great Enclosure, offers us a glimpse of the artist’s inner life.
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The many Beethoven myths
That the composer, whose 250th anniversary is being celebrated this year, overcame deafness to write the greatest music of…
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Dickens and his demons
How the novelist hid his cruel side – infidelity, bullying callousness, malice – in plain sight in his fiction.
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Concerning the common nature of all
A book saved from a library in Seoul during the Korean War has finally returned home, bringing with it…
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Cormac McCarthy’s existential Westerns
In his career-defining Border Trilogy, the late novelist summoned the ghosts of America’s bloody history.
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Mission: Impossible – Fallout is everything the recent Bond films have failed to be
Plus: the return of Ant-Man.
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Two poems by Hugo Williams
“Big White Day” and “Ghost Signs”
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Count from the Splash
A short story by Helen Dunmore.
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Blackburn: the town that stopped working
In the 1960s, the Lancashire town was a bellwether for the decline of the industrial north – struggling with a…
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My eleven sleepless nights
The torment of chronic insomnia.
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The death of Don Draper
Advertising, once a creative industry, is now a data-driven business reliant on algorithms. The implications are deeply sinister –…
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How to teach happiness
Laurie Santos’s controversial class on “the good life” is Yale University’s most popular course ever. But can you really…
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A few of my favourite things: David Shrigley, Suzanne Moore and more on their unexpected collections
From David Baddiel’s Billy Bunter obsession to Audrey Niffenegger’s fascination with taxidermy – writers reflect on what it means…
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Glimpses of the elusive nightjar
Imagine a slim bird like a big swift, one as long as your hand from wrist to fingertip, and…
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The vote that could stop Brexit
With the Conservatives in chaos, a “People’s Vote” on the final deal is becoming a real possibility. But would…
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How deep is the decline of the West?
Douglas Murray’s bestseller The Strange Death of Europe claims mass immigration is to blame for the continent’s “suicide”. But…
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Porn performers have more in common with Uber drivers than you’d think
No set hours, no guaranteed income, and with limited ability to negotiate their working conditions or pay.
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Chief charlatan: the greatest imposter of the jazz age
The 1920s was a decade of swindles – and one con artist out-tricked them all.
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Perfidious Albion is a spookily prescient take on Brexit Britain
This novel is set in the near future, in a Britain that has finally, absolutely broken free from the…
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The best children’s books of summer 2018
From fairy tales to non-fiction.
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Ian Hislop’s Diary: Blasphemy trials, rude Egyptians and the difficulty of writing Brexit jokes
The shard was thrown on a rubbish tip, lay there for centuries and discovered the same time as Tutankhamun’s tomb.
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Can Mary Lou McDonald, the new face of Sinn Féin, lead the party to power?
The 49-year-old is nothing like Gerry Adams, and hopes to take the Republican party somewhere it has never been…
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Goodbye to London: the argument for moving the UK’s capital
Such is its status as a major world city that London’s economy would barely skip a beat.
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Churches have become havens from Trump’s migrant crackdown
Debora Barrios-Vasquez has not been able to leave the church since 14 May, when she sought sanctuary there to avoid…
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Commons Confidential: On Raab’s first trip to Brussels, even the Eurostar wasn’t without mishap
Your weekly dose of gossip from Westminster.
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Laughing in the dark
Twenty years ago “four northern lads” brought their blackly comic vision of small-town life to our screens. Now the…
ByLetter of the Week: Take me to your Insta
A selection of the best letters received from our readers this week. Email [email protected] to have your thoughts voiced…
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The big fight is now to establish which party has betrayed Leave voters
What connects all the possible outcomes of Brexit is that the British people voted for none of them.
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Why the Commons crushes Boris Johnson, World Cup blues and our lost sparrows
Johnson’ bluster and declamatory style simply do not work in the chamber, where he shrinks just when he ought…
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Leader: The art of collecting
In this often bewildering and chaotic world, collections can lend our lives meaning, purpose and order.
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Why you should be listening to wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson’s guide to natural habitats
The Compass: Living With Nature explores plains, desert, mountain and forest.
ByThe best shows to stream on Netflix and BBC iPlayer this summer
From a seductive French police drama to a powerful documentary about a child arsonist.
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Leader: The Brexit impasse
There is no majority for Theresa May’s “Chequers deal”, nor for any other conceivable agreement.
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Allelujah! Is Alan Bennett’s best work in years
This NHS drama is his brightest, tightest and most satisfying play since 1991’s The Madness of George III.
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Meet Agnes Marshall, the ice cream “dynamo” who used liquid air a century before Heston Blumenthal
The Victorian “Queen of Ices” has a good claim to have invented the cornet.
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I’ve just had a nine-hour phone call with a woman. Things are looking up
I am expecting a visitor, and I would like to give her the impression that I am actually a…
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“You’re quite a marchy generation aren’t you?” my 20-year-old said to me, sympathetically
I know protesting doesn’t change anyone’s mind, but it’s about sending a message.
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We were certain Malcolm’s symptoms meant cancer – so why were the scans mysteriously clear?
Doctors often get gut instincts about cases; we knew something significant was going on.
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Richard Branson Q&A: Mick Jagger’s lyrics suit me – I’ve started a few adventures
The entrepreneur talks ballooning world records, Yuval Noah Harari, and his love of Blue Planet II.
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Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is impossible to resist
This sequel has a more reflective tone than the banger-a-minute original, but you can’t deny its charms.
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