The Big Slow Down

Leader: Time for anti-Tory tactical voting

The by-elections on 23 June are a chance to send a message to the sycophants who sustain Boris Johnson’s…

Letter of the week: The turning tide

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Team Truss are already truffling for a second no-confidence vote

Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.

Philip Pullman on the end of the Costa Book Awards: a blow for children’s literature

Children’s writers used to be treated with slovenly contempt. The Whitbread and Costa showed we were worth taking seriously.

Graham Brady’s Diary: What the press got wrong about the confidence vote, and my very odd kind of celebrity

Press reports on how close I was to hearing from the requisite 54 Conservative MPs were almost always wide…

Hillary Clinton: “I don’t think the media is doing its job”

The former US presidential candidate on why the right is winning.

What the US Capitol riot hearings teach us about the slow decay of political norms

Boris Johnson is not “Britain Trump”, but the insurrection on 6 January shows the danger of not calling out…

The war in Ukraine should have strengthened Europe’s common voice. Why hasn’t it?

“European sovereignty” has to bind in central and eastern states if it is to succeed

The dire effects of tech-fuelled inequality can be seen in schools across the nation

A new report reveals how austerity and lockdown have had a predictably appalling impact on vulnerable children. 

Why are India and China failing to support Ukraine?

Kyiv is fighting a colonial aggressor – yet countries that evangelise national liberation are helping Russia project its imperial…

A history of nuclear catastrophe

Seen by many as a route to net zero, nuclear power is haunted by its past disasters.

Reviewed in Short: New books from Ramon Pacheco Pardo, Preti Taneja, Leo Damrosch and Hanna Bervoets

Shrimp to Whale by Pacheco Pardo, Aftermath by Taneja, Adventurer by Damrosch and We Had To Remove This Post…

What Antony Beevor gets wrong about Russia

The historian’s new book Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921 fails to understand that brutality is powered by ideas.

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: liberal feminism under attack

Louise Perry’s new book is a provocative denunciation of pornified culture and sex positivity.

How Paula Rego dragged the dark into the light

The painter, who has died aged 87, looked deep inside herself to make sinister but universal art.

In Ukraine, Russian is now “the language of the enemy”

The linguistic migration away from Russian that has been happening for decades has a new urgency in the wake…

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande: the joy of paid sex

Emma Thompson stars in a touching celebration of an older woman’s erotic discovery.

James Graham’s Sherwood: a rich and gripping crime drama

A stunning cast and precise sense of place elevate this BBC series set in a Nottinghamshire village haunted by…

The People vs J Edgar Hoover reveals how the FBI seized power in the United States

Emily Maitlis explores how the bureau’s unaccountable director became the architect of the US’s deep state.

Every day the natural world reveals its intelligence, but humans choose to ignore it

From the emergent order of swarming bees to how gorillas manage grief, species are constantly responding to their environments.

Smartphone use is having a radical effect on young people’s mental health

Screen time has its social upsides – but thousands of hours of lost face-to-face contact is an urgent concern.

A vomiting cat and a reader, of sorts, in the village shop. Country life isn’t dull

I haven’t been bored for a second, once I’d opened the first bottle of wine. I even found one…

After two years of strange isolation, I no longer know myself

Our new reality seems a little too normal to be normal. Are we all giving a convincing performance of…

This England: New cod on the block

This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain…

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Nedum Onuoha’s Q&A: “Never did I think I’d meet Nelson Mandela”

The former footballer on his heroes Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima and Nelson Mandela, and his love of YouTube.