Leader: The EU is only as strong as its weakest point, migration
The EU’s approach to geopolitics has too often been marked by complacency and inaction.
ByThe Magazine
In this week’s issue
The Agent of Chaos
Letter of the week: The foundations of racism
A selection of the best letters received from our readers this week.
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Boris Johnson’s shambolic speeches hide a bigger problem: the Tories are getting tired
The Prime Minister’s enemies are piling up on the back benches, and his poor address to the CBI has…
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We make no progress on racism or anything else by trawling through Azeem Rafiq’s past
There is something toxic about our attitude of one-strike-and-you’re-out, creating a culture that is determined to categorise everyone into…
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The EU wants to be a global superpower – but it has Russia to contend with
As the Belarus border crisis intensifies, migrants are once again being used as a geopolitical weapon against the EU.
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The Kyle Rittenhouse case shows terrible things happen when the state is absent
It is an indictment of a political class that allowed such a situation to develop, and an intellectual class…
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“Everyone is scared in Belarus”: Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on a migrant crisis and taking on a regime of terror in Europe
The leader of the Belarusian opposition on relations with Russia and her life in exile.
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Why I spoke out about Stanley Johnson
I didn’t want Caroline Nokes to be alone in calling out something I knew hadn’t only happened to her.
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“The parish system is a kind of spiritual NHS”: Anglican priest Alison Milbank on saving our churches
The co-founder of Save The Parish discusses her campaign and why she’ll never be a bishop.
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Is Vladimir Putin preparing for war?
Haunted by the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian president is using the pandemic, the climate crisis, migration…
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How a fourth Covid wave is crashing over Europe
As infections rise and new restrictions are imposed, Europeans are divided between the resigned majority and the angry few.
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How the weather shapes history
Throughout the ages, climate change has had profound – and sometimes devastating – consequences for human civilisation.
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How Britain was built on coal
The mining industry once defined the nation. Its absence still haunts today’s politics.
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The triumphs and travails of Andrew Mitchell
The Conservative MP’s candid, humorous memoirs expose the vileness of high politics.
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Reviewed in short: New books by Ann Patchett, Olivia Yallop, Duncan Weldon and Phil Burton-Cartledge
These Precious Days by Patchett, Break the Internet by Yallop, Muddling Through by Weldon and Falling Down by Burton-Cartledge.
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What can Adam Phillips teach us?
The writer and therapist brings curiosity and delight to psychoanalysis – and, crucially, doubt.
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Why Isabel Waidner won the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize
In Sterling Karat Gold the author writes with incandescent rage and surreal humour.
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How Nella Larsen’s Passing deconstructed the question of race
Larsen’s 1929 novel, now a Netflix film, illustrates the degree to which race is a construct – without lecturing…
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Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog is a Western brimming with menace
Benedict Cumberbatch is at his most repellent as the seething tormenter he plays here.
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Amol Rajan’s The Princes and the Press reveals the parasitical sycophancy of royal correspondents
The gargoyles on display here only make their weird, semi-necrophilia seem all the more repellent by talking so very…
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Zadie Smith’s stage debut is a filthy, feminist reworking of Chaucer
In The Wife of Willesden, the acclaimed novelist of voices has at last let her characters speak aloud.
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What the history of the vacuum cleaner tells us about our attitudes to work
Nice Try! Interior looks at a number of contemporary gadgets, asking how their development and popularity through time can…
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Hearing others’ gardening stories encourages us to dig deeper
Many gardening books are glossy, coffee-table affairs, but I prefer the ones about earth and matter and the people…
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What we do – and, crucially, don’t – know about masks and Covid
A study appears at first glance to shed new light on the efficacy of masks, but the results are…
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I worry that I am losing friends but not making enough enemies
After I bid a final farewell to my wonderful friends Maciej and Kath, I cheer myself up by remembering…
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Why a holiday in Cornwall left me longing for work
After my break-up, the deadlines and rhythms of work gave me purpose. Without it, sadness crept in.
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This England: Once in a blue moon
This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain…
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David Thewlis Q&A: “When would I like to live? Any time before all this nonsense began”
The actor on Bob Mortimer, dropping chemistry and being bugged by bugs.
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