Stuart Jeffries

The firebrand preacher who put Martin Luther in the shade

17 February 2024 9:00 am

Andrew Drummond traces the short, turbulent career of Thomas Müntzer, the rabble-rousing revolutionary behind the peasants’ uprising in 1520s Germany

Has Germany finally shaken off its dark past?

6 January 2024 9:00 am

‘When it comes to helping others, we are the world champions’, one politician declared in 2015. But Merkel’s welcome to immigrants was pragmatic – and anti-Semitism is on the rise again

Has VR finally come of age?

14 October 2023 9:00 am

VR ‘immersion’ is everywhere in London this autumn, but is it of any value? Stuart Jeffries takes the plunge

What should we make of the esoteric philosophy Traditionalism?

8 July 2023 9:00 am

Depending on one’s perspective, it is either a dangerous way of thinking or one that the decadent West would do well to study, says Mark Sedgwick

The philosophical puzzles of the British Socrates

17 June 2023 9:00 am

After vital work for British intelligence during the second world war, why did J.L. Austin devote the rest of his life to considering literally asinine questions?

The bad boy of German cinema who ‘wanted to be Marilyn Monroe’

29 April 2023 9:00 am

Rainer Werner Fassbinder made 43 highly original films, and was planning another when he died – at the same age, and in the same way, as his idol

A look inside Britain’s only art gallery in jail

8 April 2023 9:00 am

Stuart Jeffries meets the prisonerartists of HMP Grendon

The mock king of Madagascar

11 February 2023 9:00 am

David Graeber imagines the 17th-century buccaneer establishing an enlightened kingdom in the Indian Ocean where all goods were held in common

In praise of Birmingham, Britain’s maligned second city

27 August 2022 9:00 am

During my gap year in 1981, I worked on the 24th floor of Birmingham’s Alpha Tower for the Regional Manpower…

Stop tearing down controversial statues, says British-Guyanan artist Hew Locke

16 July 2022 9:00 am

Rather than tearing statues down, Hew Locke believes in reworking them to highlight their place in our imperial history. Stuart Jeffries speaks to him

We must all become Doctor Dolittles and listen to the wisdom of animals

23 April 2022 9:00 am

One day the writer and artist James Bridle rented a hatchback, taped a smartphone to the steering wheel and installed…

Renaissance radical: Carlo Crivelli – Shadows on the Sky at Ikon Gallery reviewed

12 March 2022 9:00 am

‘Camp,’ wrote Susan Sontag, ‘is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l’oeil insects and cracks in…

Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene

5 March 2022 9:00 am

Stuart Jeffries on Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene

The 17th-century Huron chief Kondiaronk can still teach us valuable lessons

11 December 2021 9:00 am

Ten years ago, David Graeber was a leading figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He and his fellow protesters…

The tyranny of the visual

6 November 2021 9:00 am

Stuart Jeffries on the tyranny of the visual

How the Beano shaped art

23 October 2021 9:00 am

Stuart Jeffries on the cultural influence of the comic that said it was good to be bad

Hugely pleasurable – a vision of summer: Jennifer Packer at the Serpentine Gallery reviewed

7 August 2021 9:00 am

We need to talk about Eric. In Jennifer Packer’s portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Eric N. Mack sits…

What really went on at Britain's Bikini Atoll?

31 July 2021 9:00 am

Stuart Jeffries takes the ferry to Orford Ness, a strange shingle spit on the Suffolk coast, where art mingles with death

Foucault was shielded from scandal by French reverence for intellectuals

31 July 2021 9:00 am

Consider the hare and the hyena. The hare, Clement of Alexandria told readers of his 2nd-century sexual self-help manual Paedagogus,…

Liberate yourself from sexual repression the Wilhelm Reich way

10 July 2021 9:00 am

When she was 22, Olivia Laing had a sensual epiphany in Brighton. She’d been drawn into a herbalist’s massage parlour…

The world's first robot artist discusses beauty, Yoko Ono and the perils of AI

29 May 2021 9:00 am

Stuart Jeffries discusses beauty, Yoko Ono and the world’s disappointments with the first robot artist

The artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise

24 April 2021 9:00 am

Stuart Jeffries on the artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise

The dark history of dance marathons

27 March 2021 9:00 am

Stuart Jeffries on the dark history of dance marathons

Skyscraper squats and a lesson from India: the future of British architecture

17 October 2020 9:00 am

Squatting, gutting and retrofitting – and a lesson from India: Stuart Jeffries looks at the future of British architecture

The guileful, soulful art of Khadija Saye

18 July 2020 9:00 am

Gwyneth Paltrow has a new neighbour. On the same block in Notting Hill as Gwynie’s Goop store, with its This…