Leader: The new intolerance
Throughout Europe, the radical right is surging.
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The clash of empires
Beginning of the end for Chavismo
Latin America’s populist tide appears to be receeding.
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The Syrian War and the return of great power politics
If the line between peace and war is being blurred, so is that between fact and fiction.
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From melodramas and monster movies: The Forbidden Room is a macabre lucky dip of a film
The movie operates on a Russian doll principle, with stories found nestling inside one another.
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Commons Confidential: Knobbling Boris
Plus: has Nigel Farage fallen out with Ukip’s paymaster?
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The night I was five Tube stops from terror, Blair’s special pleading, and the age of floods
The Tube station ticket hall in Leytonstone where a middle-aged man carrying a guitar was attacked with a knife.
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How the legacy of the Cold War still affects Iraq today
The US needs a new policy on Iraq – the current strategy has had devastating effects.
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Yentob has left the building – but Broadcasting House will survive without him
It is vital that the BBC comes through the departure of its creative director, Alan Yentob, in good shape.
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Among sporting brothers, one is always the boss as the Nevilles show
Gary Neville will be bossing around his younger brother, Phil, at Valencia, now that he has become manager.
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Why Marine Le Pen’s surge is no surprise
Marine Le Pen’s FN party is close to regional power.
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Even Tory MPs are troubled by their party’s power grab
Since their victory, the Conservatives have introduced a battery of measures to weaken the opposition and reduce accountability.
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No place like home: a meditation on the meaning of hotels
Hotel by Joanna Walsh is deft and imaginative, tripping between references to Katherine Mansfield, Mae West, the Marx Brothers…
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The amorous intensity of Iris Murdoch’s letters
Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch (1934-1995) shows the author’s sexual mutability and witty warmth.
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Grace under fire: Marilynne Robinson’s essays sing with the thrill of intellectual humility
In The Givenness of Things, Marilynne Robinson deploys the heroic, sonorous prose of the founding fathers in the cause…
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Caught in the parent trap: women and the skewed work-family balance
The Having It All trope won’t go away. It’s the Gordian knot of gender relations, and doesn’t it bore you…
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The remedy for Elaine’s chest pains lay in a serious conversation with her son
Unless she changed tack, she was in danger of producing a young man incapable of taking responsibility for himself.
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The sad demise of Newsnight: how to save a sinking ship
The show’s expertise seems to be leaching away. Too often, its journalists end up telling me something I already…
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The Returning Officer: Suffragettes VII
“We beseech thee, O Lord, on behalf of Emmeline Pankhurst, Helen Crawfurd and all the brave women suffering for…
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Taming of the shrews: The Misogyny Book Club on BBC Radio 4
The whole staggering scene whittled down into a feeble little dribble of sexism. And absolutely no oppositional voice.
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Caryl Churchill’s Here We Go: Eight actors in search of an ending
As has come to be expected from late Churchill, Here We Go has a beautiful, quasi-musical structure.
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I visited Jimmy Savile at home in Leeds. He wore pointed pixie shoes and said, “Nobody, I don’t need nobody”
He spoke in patter, in a kind of spoken wallpaper. He exuded false modesty.
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Three little maids remade: Jonathan Miller’s Mikado at the ENO
This Mikado succeeds where every other version I’ve seen has failed, because it constantly reminds us that Gilbert and…
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A week of work, wine and cheese in California awaits – and my old friend tropophobia rears his head
I am well aware that I am being pathetic.
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Free the grapes: take terroir with a pinch of salt
Not that the concept of terroir refers purely to soil. It is sunshine, rainfall, maybe even air quality: the ineffable…
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“White”: a new poem by Craig Raine
“A cabbage white / bluster at the edge of sight.”
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Invisible scars: what it’s like to survive a war
Too many outsiders to the world of war leap to make generalisations over those afflicted by PTSD.
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British politics and the lost art of rhetoric
Hilary Benn and others were acclaimed for their speeches in the Syria debate in the Commons. But if this…
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Our brothers’ keepers: Harry Leslie Smith visits the “Jungle” in Calais
As a young British soldier in 1945, Harry Leslie Smith witnessed Europe’s last great refugee crisis. Now, aged 92,…
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