Rock star physicist Carlo Rovelli on why time is an illusion
“I found something extraordinarily beautiful and extraordinarily radical. And I thought, wow, this is better than LSD”
By
What Marx got right
Why Marx is more relevant than ever in the age of automation
On the bicentenary of his birth, Marx continues to be a key thinker thanks to his surprising faith in the individual.
By
Hearts on their sleeves: what drives us to get – and often regret – tattoos?
In his Edinburgh clinic, the GP Gavin Francis sees more than his fair share of tattoos that ordinarily go…
By
Kim Wilde Q&A: “If I’d never been outside, I’d never have seen the UFOs“
The singer talks gardening, pregnancy and seventies pop.
By
Cult or culture? How three letters make the difference between good and bad
Cult is a way of saying: you lot are weirdos. Yet perhaps more of us belong to them than we’d care…
By
One unexpected viral hit, and I’m reminded just how it feels to be the centre of attention
Fame, and social media, can flatten us out, making us cartoon-like, when actually we wish we were that simple.
By
I thought I was at the vanguard of middle-class homelessness – but we’re everywhere you look
In a month’s time, K— and I will be competing for sofas around the country.
By
Why seabirds remain the most mysterious creatures of all
The avian magicians spend months at sea, never touching land and taking only a moment’s rest now and then.
By
Soul Music is Radio 4’s greatest labour of love – each episode takes up to five years to make
Now in its 26th series, the show takes a song or a piece of music and looks at its…
By
Directors: please stop trying to depict “genius”
In an age of #MeToo, Antonia Banderas’ Picasso strolls manfully in the opposite direction, portraying the artist’s priapism a good…
By
Journalism’s lord of misrule: the gonzo philosophy of Hunter S Thompson
Who Killed Hunter S Thompson? is a big and beautiful compendium of friends’ reminiscences of the infamous writer.
By
The Young Karl Marx is a sparky retelling of the build up to The Communist Manifesto
One may conclude Raoul Peck’s biopic is so absorbing because Marx’s ideas remain so full of fire and so alive.
By
Skam Austin: Facebook’s US remake of a Norwegian phenomenon
The remake is a chance for Skam to find an even bigger audience, but it’s also a bid from Facebook to…
By
David Peace’s Patient X is a clumsy reimagining of the works of writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Peace’s treatment reads rather like a cover version in which the singer has added a load of unnecessary oohs and…
By
You Think It, I’ll Say It: Curtis Sittenfeld’s new story collection shows how the personal is political
If social politics dominates these stories, national politics nibbles at the edges of them.
By
A whiter shade of hate: the long history of the American far right
How Donald Trump combined the polar opposites of Aryan nationalism and the American Dream.
By
Arlott, Swanton and English cricket’s class divide
A stockbroker’s son and a CND-supporting poet: the two great commentators embodied the divisions at the heart of the…
By
The Good Neighbour
A new poem by Anita Pati.
By
Rupert Murdoch saved the British newspaper industry – but at what cost?
Working under Murdoch in the 1990s, I realised that he didn’t want to dominate the world – he just…
By
We must try to understand how unwanted virginity leads self-hating incels to murder
To understand their motivation isn’t to pity or excuse incels – but it is imperative to preventing more deaths.
By
What the new cult of perfectionism means for motherhood
Precarious working conditions, social media obsessions and paranoid parenting are turning young people into extreme perfectionists – with alarming results.
By
Expect the White House correspondents to cheer on Michelle Wolf? Think again
What is it with the White House press corps? Is there a more servile group of reporters anywhere in…
By
Why writers are looking beyond the city to the rural, Leave-voting heartlands
Everyone in London theatre acknowledges that the white, upper-middle-class experience is over-represented.
By
Why Owen Jones’s attack on Andrew Neil secretly delighted the BBC
The broadcaster enjoys such assaults, which undermine the usual claim that it is controlled by liberal lefties.
By
Rosie McKeown’s Diary: Life after winning University Challenge
Having attended a comprehensive, I hope my appearance will encourage others in state education to apply to Oxbridge – and to…
By
Crumbling Britain: the welfare state has created its own hostile environment
The ever-tightening squeeze on social care is just one way in which austerity is affecting my patients.
By
Commons Confidential: How Amber’s voyage to No 10 turned rudderless
Your weekly dose of gossip from Westminster
By
One man’s race to bring the forgotten music of the Holocaust to life
“It is an emergency – the survivors are 96, 97, 100 years old”
By
Is Sajid Javid, the son of a Pakistani bus driver, the Tories’ new John Major?
After May’s disastrous election campaign and the fall of Amber Rudd, the new Home Secretary is now a heavyweight…
By
Sajid Javid’s appointment as Home Secretary is yet more Tory fetishisation of “business”
Conservatives prize previous experience in finance over all else, yet it doesn’t translate to a great department of state.
By
Leader: Why the government must abolish the net migration target
A rational immigration system should be based on needs, not numbers.
By