Celebrity Traitors is obsessed with the past
The show’s line-up seems to have been selected from a decade ago. But that’s nothing to fret about
ByNostalgia
Nostalgia is a seductive liar
But its political power is real.
By
To the young, everything is fresh and new
And I must admit: I envy them for it.
By
The lost art of the landline call
Also this week: the ghost of Princess Di, and the end of the Caramac bar.
By
In praise of the DVD
The infinite choice of TV streaming has led to banality and fatigue – it’s time to embrace physical media once…
By
The contradictions of Arctic Monkeys
In the run-up to their headline Glastonbury set, the band defied the creative arc of their late career by shutting…
By
How Pulp launched the second summer of Britpop
A Tory government in crisis, cargo trousers on trend and indie anthems everywhere – at the band’s joyous reunion show,…
By
International Booker winner Georgi Gospodinov: “We’re living in the memory gap”
The Bulgarian novelist on the legacy of communism, the necessity of irony and why remembering is a political act.
By
The curse of the Noughties reboot
From Peep Show to Gossip Girl, new versions of classic 2000s shows fail to understand why their time period was…
By
Rachmaninoff’s enduring melodies
In his lifetime, his music was an escape from modernity – 150 years after his birth, the Russian composer bridges…
By
The transporting effects of plane reading, how not to adapt Dickens, and why I care only for novels
I rarely see anything on television or in the cinema as adventurous as what can be found in a book.
By
My epiphany came on a sailing boat off the Isles of Scilly, flanked by dolphins
I am not sure I’ll ever get my head around the combinations of choice and circumstance that make us who…
By
Is techno about to die?
And has trance music killed it?
By
Michael Bracewell’s anatomy of English nostalgia
In Unfinished Business one of our finest cultural critics returns to fiction with a meditation on memory and national decline.
By