For all the uproar among Labour MPs, Jeremy Corbyn is going nowhere
The Labour leader’s weakness among MPs is more than counterbalanced by his strength among members.
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The Corbyn supremacy
Talking to Marlene, I thought: “How fat do you have to be before a plane refuses to take off with you on it?”
It was indeed a terrible situation to lose your dream job because of excess baggage.
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Abi Morgan on Suffragette: “These were voiceless women. We gave them a voice”
The screenwriter Abi Morgan explains why Suffragette spurned the story of the Pankhursts to focus on working-class activists.
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All in the emphasis: how Marlon Brando turned his scripts from good to great
Does there exist one individual, radio-friendly, incontrovertible moment of Marlon Brando’s that perfectly transmits his genius?
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My big fat Greek tragedies: on new productions of Medea and Oresteia
The decision to “Greek it up” for half a year has given the Almeida a bold and engrossing revisit…
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Loving the crustacean: an unstable fantasy in dating dystopia The Lobster
The atmosphere throughout this film resembles that last, desperate, twilight hour at any nightclub.
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Allegory and humiliation on the BBC’s Secret Life of Books
Plus Abi Morgan’s new drama River – it should be so good, and yet it is so bafflingly bad.
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To look a courtier in the mouth: how to see beyond the stiff upper lips in Goya’s portraits
Goya’s sketched faces are haunting islands of humanity in a sea of guarded aristocrats.
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Theatrical knotweed: Margaret Drabble journeys around Shakespeare’s globe
It is hard to characterise Andrew Dickson’s Worlds Elsewhere – it is a discursive, rambling, global volume.
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Walter Benjamin, the first pop philosopher
Ray Monk looks at the life of Walter Benjamin, and discovers how he found his calling.
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Pat Barker’s Noonday shows the full scale of the Blitz
A novel of sure-footed storytelling and some fine descriptive writing, Noonday reveals the impact of war through a kaleidoscope.
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An expert witness of the human condition: Ian Rankin on Ruth Rendell
Ruth Rendell’s Dark Corners reminds us that, at its best, crime fiction is capable of holding up a mirror…
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A Menshevik for all seasons: the diaries of Stalin’s ambassador
Ivan Maisky’s diaries from his time as ambassador are important historical documents. If only this new book wasn’t so…
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Throwing up the dead: the novelists mimicking Ian Fleming and Stieg Larsson
Anthony Horowitz and David Lagercrantz have produced two crime novels that stick to the tried and tested formulas.
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Leader: The SNP and the neverendum
While SNP politicians obsess about independence – which they like to say is a process, not an event –…
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Jem Finer of the Pogues: a millennium in music
What makes a piece of music timeless?
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Fears of instability after the Ankara attack
On the streets of Ankara, residents wear black cards pinned to their chests bearing the words “We won’t forget”.
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Visiting Lotte on Minecraft
Everything changed when my eight-year-old daughter, Lotte, discovered Minecraft.
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The life of a colonial poet
Paintings of Thomas Pringle show a pale, elfin man with large eyes. What they don’t show is his soulfulness – and…
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Lessons from a digital rat brain
There is nothing mysterious or miraculous about the brain.
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Commons Confidential: George’s Monkeys moment
I do trust a reporter will invite Sir George to recite the lyrics of Sufjan Stevens songs such as “A…
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When is a terrorist not a terrorist?
When he’s a white American man.
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Strategy is dependent on context and England’s rugby coach was fighting the previous war
Team culture can’t be reasoned away.
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My Corbynite mother, Boris abuse, and talking horse sex with Jilly Cooper
In England, lit fests thrive, as Auberon Waugh once put it, because writers hate writing and readers hate reading.
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Civil disobedience may be the bravest option for feminists but it’s not always the smartest one
“When you’ve tried everything you can, what else can you do but demand freedom?”
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Most performers want their audiences to like them. I just want to be Stewart Lee
Lee is perhaps the most intelligent comedian ever to tread British boards.
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The Returning Officer: Winchester II
In 1929, Frances Louise Josephy contested Winchester for the Liberals and finished third.
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Distance makes the heart grow fonder
I held the rock in my hand during the crossing, an anchor to Earth that would remind me of…
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The screening industry is more interested in profit than your health
The private screening industry is essentially unregulated, and causes substantial worry and sometimes physical harm, all in the pursuit…
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Out with the old: the ghost homes of Japan
Japan’s shrinking population has produced a different kind of housing problem.
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Trotsky, Blair and the new politics
The turmoil created by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership could help the Labour Party rediscover its purpose. But another source of…
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Heart on the left, head on the right: the contradictions inside the SNP
Will the SNP collapse under the weight of its own contradictions before it achieves its goal of independence?
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A word of advice: don’t ever think you’re safe just because you’re not from St Albans
Ask not for whom the sinkhole gapes: it gapes for thee.
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In football, sons follow fathers, but have better hair and less hunger to win
It’s quite eerie observing Kasper Schmeichel in goal for Leicester, playing in exactly the same position and looking the…
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