Ménage à trois: Day, by Michael Cunningham, reviewed
When Dan, his wife Isabel and her brother Robbie decide to spend lockdown together, claustrophobic domesticity develops into a painful love triangle
The proposed cities of the future look anything but modern
The vision for California Forever, an American utopian city still at planning stage, is pure picture-book nostalgia of bicycles, rowing boats and tree-lined streets
Hanif Kureishi – portrait of the artist as a young man
Descriptions of the gifted author tearing up the literary landscape of the late 20th century are deeply poignant when set alongside Kureishi’s recent despatches from hospital
Downhill all the way: the decline of the British Empire after 1923
Matthew Parker gives us snapshots of Britain’s sprawling dominions in September 1923, showing both governors and governed increasingly questioning the purpose of the empire
Why was the British army so ill-prepared to fight the second world war?
After 1918, the general staff ceased to focus on who they might have to fight next and how, leading to the abysmal performance of the army in Norway and France in 1940
She’s leaving home: Breakdown, by Cathy Sweeney, reviewed
One ordinary November day in Dublin, without forethought or planning, a woman walks out on her husband and two teenage children and never comes back
Milton Friedman – economic visionary or scourge of the world?
Monetarism, with which his name is associated, has long defined economic policy. But what would Friedman have made of the banking collapse, so soon after his death in 2006?
The travails of Britain’s first Labour government
Attacked in the press, by the right and even by its own supporters, Ramsay MacDonald’s short-lived government still managed to achieve a surprising amount
