Saved from certain death at Auschwitz – by playing the cello
Exploring the relationship between the cello and its player, Kate Kennedy describes how Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s musical gift enabled her to survive not just one but two Nazi death camps
The juicy history of the apple
Greeks, Romans, Norse and Celts all rooted their fertility myths in the apple – and through its association with the Garden of Eden it came to symbolise irresistible temptation
The enduring charisma of Brazil’s working-class president
With his dedication to the labouring poor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is seen as both the humblest of politicians and his country’s saviour – perhaps even endowed with miraculous qualities
Is it wrong to try to ‘cure’ autism?
Do autistic individuals not feel empathy? What is the right treatment for an autistic child? These are just some of the questions discussed in Virginia Bovell’s passionate, informative memoir
Tales with a twist: Safe Enough and Other Stories, by Lee Child, reviewed
Child has fun with the short story form, shooting from the hip. Sometimes the bad get their comeuppance, sometimes they don’t – but the good are rarely rewarded or even recognised
How could Hitler have had so many willing henchmen?
Richard J. Evans tackles one of the Third Reich’s great mysteries. Why did so many apparently ‘normal’ Germans end up as perpetrators of mass atrocities?
Her weird name was the least of Moon Unit Zappa’s problems
Frank and Gail Zappa’s eldest child describes how the endless battles between her manipulative mother and misogynist father in the 1970s blight the family to this day
Whoever imagined that geology was a lifeless subject?
The shifting rocks of Earth’s crust are part of the planet’s ecology just as much as plants and animals, says Marcia Bjornerud – applying to geology the principle of universal connectivity
Imperfections in wood can make for the loveliest carvings
Often beneath the surface of a knobbly lump bulging from the side of a tree ‘a myriad of swirling, almost impossibly beautiful clusters is hiding’, bursting with creative possibility
A death foretold: The Voyage Home, by Pat Barker, reviewed
Cassandra prophesies Agamemnon’s death as punishment for his crimes in Troy. But she knows that she too must share his fate -- since ‘you can’t cherry-pick prophecy’
Bogart and Bacall’s first film together might as well have been called Carry On Flirting
Just a few months after the release of To Have and Have Not, with its sassy, sexy script, the film’s stars were married. But, as in many of Bogart’s films, romance also involved intrigue
How ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ plays tricks with the mind
First published in 1798, Coleridge’s masterpiece, about a man obsessed with retelling his story, has obsessed readers ever since, because it never offers up closure
There is a little bit of Frank Sinatra in Donald Trump
Unless you are drinking from the cistern that Bill Kristol and his herd top off daily, you will have been…
Do we now have proof Ukraine blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?
When three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany were destroyed by unknown saboteurs in September…
The desecration of Canterbury cathedral
According to canon 1220 of the Catholic church’s code of canon law, ‘all those responsible are to take care that…
Prison officer probes soar amid bonking craze
Prison is supposedly a place for wrongdoers to repent and reform – but it seems that even the staff inside…
Tim Walz’s military crime is all in the cover-up
There’s an unmistakable aura if you’ve ever been to any of the 172 VA medical centers run by the Veterans…
Dispelling the myths about electric vehicles
Every time I write about electric cars, there is an explosion of hostile comments online in which readers angrily denounce…
Mount Warning: the NSW government’s great divide
Ladies and gentlemen, gather ‘round for a backstory that’s more convoluted than an Australian Olympic breakdancer. Mount Warning, a place…
Is Columbia’s loss the UK Foreign Office’s gain?
Few will shed a tear at the news that Columbia University president Minouche Shafik is stepping down after months of…
Kamala Harris’s economic policy is completely idiotic
She didn’t have to slog around New Hampshire, there were no debates, and there were few opportunities for voters or…
Scottish Tory leadership candidates call for race to halt
All is not well in the Scottish Tory party. Now four of the six candidates have released a statement calling…
Editor’s picks
