Mariana Mazzucato’s bold mission to reform the global economy
In The Value of Everything, Mazzucato points out our flawed economic measures. But solutions are in short supply.
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The Nuclear Family
Why Robert Aickman is the master of “weird fiction”
Reading Aickman’s strange stories is to glimpse a reality you would prefer to forget.
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The NS Poem: Inland Thornbills
A new poem by John Kinsella
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Derek Parfit’s quest for perfection
Derek Parfit was one of the world’s most influential moral philosophers. He also took photographs, of the same places,…
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How Hernando Colón compiled the greatest private library in Europe
The untold story of Christopher Columbus’s bibliophile son.
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How humans claim – and change – the landscape
In recent years, writing about landscape has begun to confront troublesome human drive to own nature.
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England are seventh favourites to win the World Cup – more proof of the unwisdom of crowds
Every World Cup begins with hope, and time after time our finest footballers do their best to extinguish it.
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How to fix the welfare state
From the “Swindon experiment” and beyond, Hilary Cottam’s ideas could transform our social crisis.
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Why the success of LBC’s shock jocks is unsettling the BBC
Among BBC producers, there are those who find LBC’s interpretation of impartiality more attractive than “this person says yes, this person says…
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Alison Moore’s Missing explores the lasting effects of early trauma
In under 200 pages, Moore skilfully delivers a twisty, suspenseful story that doubles as a study of unspoken grief.
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Grenfell’s long shadow: how the fatal fire became an ethical tipping point for Britain
The centralised, neoliberal housing system first introduced by Thatcher failed to provide decent homes for low-waged people.
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The philosophers’ suicide pact: Ryan Ruby’s high-stakes novel Zero and the One
For two cerebral Oxford undergraduates the obscure writings of a German thinker become a matter of life and death.
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Keeping up with the Kims: North Korea’s communist monarchy
What do its three generations of leaders tell us about this brutal dictatorship and its prospects of a nuclear…
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Why Nina Raine’s Consent left a sour taste in my mouth
In this play, rape matters only for how it affects the plot – not the victim.
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Nothing Like A Dame is a daring film featuring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright and Eileen Atkins just chatting
Old women? Talking? No men around? It’s amazing it got made at all.
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How Radio 3 documented a drowned world below the Solent
Exploring a lost civilisation: a Mesolithic site at Bouldnor Cliff, which disappeared under the sea 8,000 years ago.
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Germaine Greer has always refused to be “nice” – if only there were more of her
The difference with Greer is that she doesn’t get into trouble occasionally, but consistently and with the attitude of…
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Sequins and self-destruction: McQueen and the punishing world of high fashion
Two new documentaries, about Alexander McQueen and Studio 54, are caught between rejoicing in excess and mourning its effects.
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Theresa May’s Brexit chaos gifts Jeremy Corbyn a chance to unite the country
There is an opportunity not just to defeat May on a customs union but to shatter the authority of…
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European settlers’ belief that vines could thrive in Australia proved justified
Soil, climate, people, all make a difference, along with that intangible something we can neither name nor forego.
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Matthew Engel’s diary: My love-Hay relationship and the benefits of hard borders
I have a dual relationship with Hay – I have sometimes been a performer, and have known the angst and the pleasure,…
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We were odd children, yes, but why did we feel sorry for Jeffrey Dahmer?
As our childhood serial killer interest developed, Dahmer became a “favourite” for my brother and I.
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Like any good father, I’m an example to my offspring – of how not to live
I get on with my children so well perhaps because they are grateful to see exactly what they should…
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Has he flown too high? The imperial overreach of Tesla boss Elon Musk
An ongoing dispute over workers’ rights is undermining Musk’s do-good, ethical image.
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Letter of the week: Reality of renationalisation
A selection of the best letters received from our readers this week. Email [email protected] to have your thoughts voiced in…
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How inequality pollutes the mind – the lessons of The Inner Level
In their new book, the authors of The Spirit Level, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, reveal the psychological cost of the…
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How the Arco lamp became an on-screen symbol of super-affluence
A shortcut to sleek, futuristic, hyper-masculine wealth on screen in recent years, from Mad Men to Iron Man.
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Commons Confidential: The DUP’s mysterious missing peer
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
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The British public of the 1970s was not ready to think the worst of Jeremy Thorpe
Tom Mangold’s documentary, made in 1979 and just shown for the first time on BBC Four, gives a good…
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Labour’s Brexit strategy: to defeat the Tories in parliament and force an election
Corbyn and many of his advisers are longstanding Eurosceptics but they are fully aware their only prospect of defeating…
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Leader: It is time for MPs to take back control over Brexit
On 12 June, MPs will debate and vote on the 15 amendments made by the House of Lords and a…
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