ambition

Nothing satisfies Madonna for very long

16 December 2023 9:00 am

Her ‘rebel’ life, as told by Mary Gabriel, has been a frenzied churn of friends, lovers, mentors and collaborators, vital to her for a year or two and then discarded

A.N. Wilson has many regrets

10 September 2022 9:00 am

‘Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.’ A.N. Wilson seems, on the surface, to have taken to heart…

The machinations of the Dudleys make Game of Thrones look tame

26 February 2022 9:00 am

This is the gripping story of the ever-fluctuating fortunes of three generations of the Dudley dynasty, servants to — and…

Experiences of Eton — and the success it rewards

10 July 2021 9:00 am

In the summer of 2019, the journalist Anita Sethi was on a train travelling across northern England when she was…

Credit: Alamy

Beware the female stalker: Dream Sequence, by Adam Foulds, reviewed

26 January 2019 9:00 am

Adam Foulds’s fourth novel, Dream Sequence, is an exquisitely concocted, riveting account of artistic ambition and unrequited love verging on…

Who is Sylvia – what is she?

7 October 2017 9:00 am

In May 1956, three months after meeting Ted Hughes, one before they will marry, Sylvia Plath writes to her mother…

Charles Moore’s Notes: people who love making new laws like to present them as human rights

30 May 2015 9:00 am

Amnesty International and others have placed a large newspaper advertisement telling Michael Gove ‘Don’t Scrap Our Human Rights’. The ad…

When did ambition become a dirty word in Bristol?

29 November 2014 9:00 am

A city with a chip on its shoulder

Demosthenes’ lessons in ambition for Boris Johnson

16 August 2014 9:00 am

The ancient Greek word for ‘ambition’ was philotimia: ‘love of high esteem in others’ eyes’. Both Boris and Alex Salmond…