Magazine

Andrew O’Hagan’s ode to friendship

In his memoir/manifesto, the author suggests the close relationships we make with peers shape our lives

The World Cup in the age of extremes

Next year’s edition, to be held in Donald Trump’s America, will only be the latest in a long history of…

When did opera become elitist?

Alexandra Wilson’s history of the art form in Britain shows how it used to appeal to everyone, from miners to…

The price of revolution

Jason Burke chronicles how radical activists in the 1970s found violent new ways to pursue their causes

NS Poem: These Foolish Things

A new poem by Craig Raine

Alan Partridge’s late style

Can a national joke survive when it’s also trying to become a national treasure?

Does Taylor Swift really shine on The Life of a Showgirl?

The new album trades her heart-thumping highs for soft-rock meanderings

My night out with the citizens of nowhere

At St Pancras’s champagne bar, I forget Brexit even happened

My mother, the Broadway star of Cloudesley Ward

She’s in hospital, the cat’s starving (apparently), and somehow Deborah Levy turns up in the lift

This England: Bussing for the loo

This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain –…

Finally, I tackle my fear of woodwork

A workshop course has somehow helped me confront both grief and power tools

October 1977: Martin Amis reports from the Conservative Party Conference

Is Shabana Mahmood the next prime minister?

Only Keir Starmer can solve Labour’s immigration bind

GB News will never love Kemi Badenoch

The channel’s viewers are her lost voters

Thomas Pynchon’s lasting triumph

His latest novel borrows too freely from his previous work. But what work it has been

The truth about the small-boats crisis

What Nigel Farage won’t tell you

The Labour government has abandoned British Jews

Shabana Mahmood is correct that British Jews are “justified in asking for more from their government”

What it’s like to be Jewish in Britain now

The war in Gaza has exposed a level of anti-Semitism I didn’t realise was there

I’ve had a disappointing week, salvation-wise

I am neither the infidel, and nor do I find myself in heaven

Starmer has not yet proved he can solve our quicksand politics

Our political system is that we make huge mistakes, and then reverse them to make mistakes in the opposite direction