From probiotics to poetry: how Rachel Kelly keeps depression at bay
Kelly describes herself as a people-pleaser and yet 12 years ago she fled her own Christmas party, crushed by…
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The age of terror
Leader: The age of terror
In their scope, ruthlessness and malevolence, the Paris attacks felt like the dawn of a renewed era of mass…
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The utopia of Isis: inside Islamic State’s propaganda war
Islamic State’s cheerful media images seem incongruous to us in the West. But the group are committed to showing…
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How “cultural terrorism“ became a matter of international law
The destruction of manuscripts in Timbuktu became a landmark case for cultural terrorism.
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What is the future of physics?
If we are to see another technological leap like the one James Clerk Maxwell’s equations made possible, it will…
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Why Isis seeks a battle with Western nations – and why it can’t be ignored
Islamic State believes it must eventually confront and then defeat the West. To get there, it seeks to polarise…
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Commons Confidential: Cruel intentions
Robert Halfon’s East India Club jaunts, Mark Reckless plans a comeback, and a warning for Alan Yentob.
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If the West closes its borders, the terrorists will have won
The two most dangerous words in politics are “us” and “them”. At times of great national tragedy, we should…
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As the threat from Isis grows, Labour’s internal warfare will only get worse
The debate over foreign and defence policy has exposed the chasm between Jeremy Corbyn and his MPs.
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Reflecting on Paris, violent anthems – and living normal lives amid the bullets and bombs
If you believe some reports, normal life will soon be impossible in Paris, London and other European cities. Spare…
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T S Eliot and the sexual wasteland
The poet had a tangled relationship with the erotic, once remarking that however intimate a love poem may be, it…
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Gaspar Noé’s Love shows the difference between art and pornography
Love is a relationship examined through sex, with an emotional intimacy that would be disastrous in pornography.
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When it comes to responding to Islamic State, there is no middle ground
If Britain has a declared interest in curtailing Islamic State and stabilising Syria, it is neither honourable nor viable…
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“The Wren and the Coconut”: a poem by Clive James
I wonder if they still are, wonder why, / While barely knowing a blue tit from a bullfinch, /…
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After the Paris attacks, life goes on in a sleepless, grieving and edgy city
Andrew Hussey reports on the mood in a city struggling with complex questions about the attacks that have a…
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How the man fans believed was Elvis removed his mask
Orion: the Man Who Would Be King tells the story of Jimmy Ellis – and how his act ended. Plus: The…
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When my child was born I got so high on morphine that I started talking about risotto
I looked at the baby, recited some Auden at him, decided he could look after himself, and asked for…
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In an age where history is neatly divided, two new books take a longer view
The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley and Human Race by Ian Mortimer have, to put it gently, an…
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Shiver those timbres: the London Jazz Festival hits the airwaves
To Ronnie Scott’s in Soho for the opening of the London Jazz Festival and the launch of a new…
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The Returning Officer: Suffragettes IV
Barbara Bodichon Ayrton-Gould was the Labour MP for Hendon North (1945-50). She had stood for Northwich in 1924, 1929…
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A brimming bowl of frosted farce at the Cereal Killer Café
Kulturkampf wing of the class cleansing directed by Gauleiter Osborne et al they may be, but there’s something compelling about…
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The whole point of television is not just to watch it but to shout at it, too
What, you thought it was just you who hurled witty comments from your sofa, happily slagging things off? We all do;…
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Time for put-upon Sicily to put out its wines
The high-altitude vineyards of Italy’s largest island produce nectar for the gods, Greek or Roman.
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Adventures in Human Being is an entrancing roadmap of the flesh
For Gavin Francis, medicine is “a skeleton key to open doors ordinarily closed”, and his latest book is as illuminating…
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“Rhodes must fall,” chants the crowd. But bringing down an imperialist’s statue won’t change the past
“Rhodes is a metaphor for the fact that the university is not a fully inclusive space,” says Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh.
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Bernie Sanders and the future of the American left
How an old, white guy is bringing class-based politics to the Democratic primary.
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End of an orator: the ancient Roman machinations of Robert Harris’s Dictator
Dictator, the final installment in the “Cicero trilogy”, finds the great lawyer exiled from Rome.
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Books of the year: the essential NS reading list
Our friends and contributors choose their favourite reading of 2015.
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Orson Welles in middle age
Orson Welles: One-Man Band by Simon Callow shows how Welles was an often chaotic yet masterful film-maker in his middle…
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Are the north and even its best footie clubs on the slagheap for good?
The northern problem is not just economics, but social and cultural. Their wives take one look at the map…
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In Peep Show, two men in their forties sharing a flat is comedy – what does that make me?
The BBC call me up for a comment on flat-sharing as an adult man, and I start brooding.
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It’s unlikely a Snooper’s Charter would have stopped the Paris shooters
David Cameron is using the Paris attacks as an excuse to rush through state surveillance legislation.
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