After autofiction
Rachel Cusk and Karl Ove Knausgaard embarked on works blurring the boundaries between fiction and autobiography. Now the two…
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Will Labour split?
Leader: The enduring cultural influence of Winnie the Pooh
Still enraging the Eeyores of public life, 92 years on.
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Project Cybersyn: the afterlife of Chile’s socialist internet
Through an electronic “nervous system”, Salvador Allende’s left-wing government anticipated the era of big data.
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From Myers Briggs to the Love Languages: the renaissance of the personality test
After being dogged by years of scepticism and derision, personality tests are making a comeback.
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Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a banal and risible self-help book
Like an undergraduate struggling to reach the word count, Harari writes in pointless asides and cringeworthy platitudes of fortune-cookie…
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The unexpected radical past of Essex
Behind the picture-postcard side of Essex is a history of non-conformism.
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Post-colonial party people: the revolutionaries of Algiers
The city of Algiers has been a byword for terror and corruption for so long now that it is…
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Sally Rooney’s Booker-longlisted Normal People shimmers with intelligence
Rooney is the best young novelist in years.
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To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before knows where the effervescence of a great romcom lies
This sweet teen movie is clichéd, over-engineered and absolutely perfect.
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Exit, pursued by a bear: how the real Christopher Robin escaped Winnie-the-Pooh
As a new Disney film imagines Christopher Robin as a careworn salaryman, AA Milne’s biographer recalls the boy behind…
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The money diaries: how salacious stories of overdrafts replaced sex advice for millennials
A form of confessional journalism that provides an excruciatingly detailed look at people’s spending habits.
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Grayson Perry’s Rites of Passage tackles the British unease about mourning
Perry is kind, without ever tipping into sentimentality, generous without pretending to be closer than he really is to those…
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Dancing in the endzone: a rare interview with Clive James
The author talks about Federer, Dante, Trump and his long struggle with leukaemia.
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The NS Poem: In Two Minds
A new poem by Clive James.
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Politics of the void: how the left abandoned patriotism and the common good
From the mid-1960s the New Left took socialism in a doctrinaire direction that was abstract and soulless, preferring progress…
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Emma Thompson is at her best in Ian McEwan adaptation The Children Act
Thompson is finding new shades of scepticism and warmth nearly 30 years on from her first cinema role.
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How motorway service station restaurants were once the height of excitement
Medieval banquets, Whitstable oysters and Jimi Hendrix.
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Leaving Labour: why a party split is now inevitable
For some disgruntled MPs who accept that Corbynism is here to stay, a clean break is now a case of when and how.
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Telling the story of austerity Britain through the medium of zombies
The residents of the Firs and Bromford estates in north-east Birmingham wanted to steer clear of a documentary.
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The anti-Corbyn alliance: who is likely to lead a Labour Party split?
For some disgruntled MPs, a clean break is now only a case of when and how.
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Seven hours to Salisbury, for shoe-shopping with the Welsh Enchantress
Queen Elizabeth Gardens, known locally as Lizzie Gardens, is still cordoned off, for Novichok reasons.
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Julia Hobsbawm’s diary: Yanis’s beer mat, hiking off the dumplings and why social health is the next big thing
The European Forum Alpbach in Austria is a sort of mid-year Davos.
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A democratic socialist in America: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s mission
The 28-year-old Democrat is set to become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress – and is determined to…
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How Greece will feel the deep scars of austerity long after the bailout
The nation’s population has fallen, its youth joblessness is the worst in the EU, and its GDP is still…
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For Rosemary and Charles, looking smart for the doctor was of the utmost importance
I found it hard to comprehend how she had managed to dress so fastidiously every day in the face…
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Commons Confidential: IDS’s summer spat
Your weekly dose of gossip from Westminster.
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Letter of the week: Flight of fancy
A selection of the best letters received from our readers this week. Email [email protected] to have your thoughts voiced…
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Daisy Johnson: “If I weren’t living off my writing I’d be a shepherd”
The author on Beyoncé, Stephen King and irritating waxing adverts.
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The Republicans not the Russians are the biggest threat to American democracy
Planned closure of polling stations is latest in long and shameful tradition of African-American voter suppression.
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The radiance of VS Naipaul, the BBC’s class culture gap and the joys of Edinburgh
A cold-eyed scourge of liberal pieties, the author had a gift for seeing, for noticing.
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Leader: The Tories’ blind commitment to austerity and privatisation has been ruinous
The failures have long been evident. But in 2018, with the renationalisation of Birmingham Prison and the East Coast Main…
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