Tainted love: a history of the most football-obsessed nation on Earth
Angels With Dirty Faces: the Footballing History of Argentina takes us behind the psychodrama.
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Syria's world war
Hit the North with Melvyn Bragg
Bragg’s new series is an Ozone-fresh take on an old topic.
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Is Victoria the new Downton Abbey? Give it time
Queen Victoria is given the bodice-ripping treatment in ITV’s new drama, but it’s not as fluffy as Downton –…
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Wise up, the “as a mother” brigade: parenthood doesn’t make you a better citizen
“As a mother”, I know Calpol dosages and revision guidelines. That doesn’t mean I have a bigger stake in…
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Meet Aheda Zanetti – the woman who invented the Burkini
Her modest swimsuit divided France, but for self-described “Aussie chick” Zanetti, the burkini has made her – and her…
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The Ukip surge: is Labour losing its Welsh heartlands?
In the 2015 election there was an 11.2 per cent swing to Ukip in Wales. In Newport, the signs…
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The betrayal of the first Christian: was Judas really a traitor?
The former Archbishop of Canterbury considers the complicated “traitor” revealed in Amos Oz’s new novel, Judas.
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How internet pirates became a political force in Iceland
In 2013, the Pirate Party won three of Iceland’s 63 parliamentary seats. The trick? A broad, radical policy.
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The baby boomers’ last laugh? Why young Britain is losing out
The political gulf between the generations is growing. Could Brexit be the final nail in the coffin?
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How poverty porn got its own game show
The prize? A year’s salary on the minimum wage.
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Dancing balls and Paxman’s “virtual corpses“
This week in the media, from Apple’s tax liabilities to Jeremy Paxman’s run-in with the “virtual corpses”.
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Café Society: how Kristen Stewart hid a good film inside Woody Allen’s bad one
The script for Allen’s Café Society is predictable, but Stewart’s acting is glorious.
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When I go on TripAdvisor, I wonder if the reviewers could have disparaged Eden
My week, including secret beaches in Puglia, TripAdvisor whingers and Norfolk’s smartening seaside.
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Sipping the wines that grew from molten lava
The vineyards of Campania roll across the landscape around Vesuvius, allowing for a beautiful resurrection.
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Hampstead Heath, midnight, a bottle of wine – is this a midlife crisis?
I suppose that, as midlife crises go, what I did was better than buying a motorbike.
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Has Tom Wolfe discovered the real origin of human language?
The Kingdom of Speech takes on Noam Chomsky and Charles Darwin in its theories about the evolution of language.
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Groundhog Day is so good, you’ll want to see it again and again (and again)
Tim Minchin’s Groundhog Day uses its own predictability to great effect.
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Leader: The Syrian tragedy
Without a solution to the Syrian war, world order will continue to crumble.
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Clement Attlee: Labour’s own Captain Mainwaring
John Bew’s new book is a curiously coy biography of a man brought down by his lack of imagination.
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How Putin conned us into thinking Russia is a superpower again
Deeply disturbing things have happened during the Putin years in Russia, but his gamble has paid off.
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Theresa May means what she says, which is why there will be no early general election
The Prime Minister is determined to win respect as a straight-talking leader.
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Why football, not the Olympics, can help us understand economics
For lessons on how to run the economy, we should look to the Premier League, not Team GB.
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Sheku Kanneh-Mason on football, maths and Shostakovich
At age 17, Kenneh-Mason is the first black winner of the Young Musician award. Can the cellist bring something new…
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Has Donald Trump been taking inspiration from action movies?
The would-be President’s delusions are taken straight from the cheapest Hollywood flicks.
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Why Bright, Precious Days is the novel you’ll both relish and despise
The final novel of Jay McInerney’s trilogy defies none of the criticisms levelled at his writing – but its…
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Commons confidential: Arise, Shoebacca
If Corbyn is an unstoppable force, Watson is an immovable object as Labour’s directly elected deputy
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In all my years working for the BBC, I’d never been given a proper, laminated security pass
Every time I entered TV Centre or Broadcasting House, I was subject to the vagaries of the corporation’s security…
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