Is Trump or Biden a bigger threat to democracy?
When more than two-thirds of the American electorate doesn’t want to vote for either major party’s nominee, a third party…
In defence of the EU
Eastern Europe is the graveyard of empires. Rome failed on the Danube, Napoleon on the Dnieper. The epic struggle between…
Women don’t want women-only clubs
In my experience, men offer this infuriating comeback when challenged about the continuing exclusion of women from clubs such as…
Is Cameron upstaging Sunak?
The logic behind Rishi Sunak’s decision to make David Cameron foreign secretary was that he would be a ‘big beast’…
Farewell, Voyager 1
Some time soon we will have to say farewell to our most distant emissary – the Voyager 1 spacecraft. After…
Why do MPs send nude pictures of themselves?
Adam Dyster has gone to work for the shadow Defra secretary Steve Reed. I admit this is not an appointment…
The arrogance of Apple
Can flexible working get the best out of what a ministerial press release calls ‘hardworking Brits’ – or is it…
What is there left to say about the Tories?
Spare a thought for us political commentators. We stare into the void between now and a (presumed) decisive Labour victory…
Bridge | 13 April 2024
I’ve been waiting for what feels like decades to make a contract by means of an intra-finesse. And not just…
Better than expected (but my expectations were low): Back to Black reviewed
When the trailer for Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic of Amy Winehouse, Back to Black, first landed, her fans were gracious. ‘This,’…
I’m ashamed that I used to think ABBA wasn’t cool
One of the joys of listening to archive BBC interviews with pop stars is the chance to hear long-discarded hipster…
Grey, gloomy, and utterly joyless: Ripley reviewed
If you’ve spent any time gawping at Netflix over the past half-decade or so, you’ll already know that human culture…
What would Tanner say?
On the train home from the Royal Festival Hall I learned of the death of Michael Tanner, who wrote this…
The mayhem ‘Born Slippy’ provoked felt both poignant and cathartic: Underworld, at Usher Hall, reviewed
On the same night Underworld played the second of two shows at the Usher Hall, next door at the Traverse…
My life of genteel poverty
Every year at the beginning of April, I tell myself I must top up my Isa before the 5 April…
There’s nothing shameful about hypochondria
Caroline Crampton describes the real agonies of people obsessed with their fragility, revealing that her own hypochondria stems from a childhood cancer diagnosis
Adrift on the Canadian frontier: The Voyageur, by Paul Carlucci, reviewed
Based on the 19th-century ‘voyageur’ Alexis de Martin, Carlucci’s young protagonist is befriended by kindly strangers. But what are their true motives?
English civil law has become a luxury good beyond the reach of most of us
Tom Burgis makes this painfully clear in his account of the long hounding of the former MP Charlotte Leslie by the vengeful millionaire Mohamed Amersi
Are we finally beginning to understand gravity?
Claudia de Rham explores the true nature of this fundamental force as she struggles against received wisdom to get a new theory of ‘massive gravity’ recognised
Eighty years on, the planning of Operation Neptune remains awesome
The seaborne invasion went so smoothly, it might have been thought plain-sailing. But that was far from the truth. Nick Hewitt describes the meticulous forethought that preceded it
Harping on the music of our ancestors
From a series of mysterious objects – ‘flower flutes’, inscriptions, ‘little black things like beetles’ wing cases’ – Graeme Lawson conjures the haunting melodies of the past
Scrawled outpourings of love and defiance
Examples of 18th-century graffiti range from romantic rhymes scratched on windowpanes to the haunting marks of political prisoners incised on dungeon walls
In defence of noise music
It’s curious to consider what a venerable old thing noise music is. That this most singularly untameable of musics –…
London’s dark underbelly: Caledonian Road, by Andrew O’Hagan, reviewed
With its vast cast and twisting plot, O’Hagan’s complex novel feels as busy and noisy as the north London thoroughfare of its title
