Culture
The invisible boundaries of everyday life
Maxim Samson investigates cultural or imaginary demarcations around the world, including the International Date Line, America’s Bible Belt and the Jewish eruvim
The death of royalty
The cohorts of Hamas have invaded my neighbourhood. I was walking my dog, Maxi, in the afterglow of a shower…
The glory of Paris has long past
Gstaad A reader’s inquiry as to why I think Paris belongs to yesterday (12 August) has me remembering times past.…
Stop trying to make high culture funky
Clive Myrie, now probably the top face of the BBC, and host of their television coverage of the Proms, had…
Who killed Australia Day?
Australia Day was once a big deal Down Under, but in recent years the annual celebration has been somewhat muted.…
Why ‘pop’ is popping up everywhere
The Guardian kindly tells us that green is a colour whose time has come: ‘A blazer or a cotton shirt…
How the travel industry convinced us we needed holidays
In September 2019, Thomas Cook filed for compulsory liquidation, leaving 600,000 customers stranded abroad. It was a sorry end to…
An inspirational teacher: Elizabeth Finch, by Julian Barnes, reviewed
‘Whenever you see a character in a novel, let alone a biography or history book, reduced and neatened into three…
When did postmodernism begin?
There’s a scene in Martin Amis’s 1990s revenge comedy The Information in which a book reviewer, who’s crushed by his…
The mind virus killing academia
We lost a giant last month with E.O. Wilson’s passing. A man who stood on Darwin’s shoulders, Wilson had that…
It's time to speak out against cancel culture
Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue…
How not to run a literary festival
Gstaad A friend of mine who lives here wants to start a literary festival and asked me if I had…
Privatisation is the best option for the South Bank Centre
I must have written about this subject 100 times in 30 years and I’m still having to restate the bloody…
Why whales sing: it’s a question of culture
Of course animals have culture
In praise of cultural elitism
At present we have a series of ‘culture wars’ over a wide range of issues — race, gender, sexuality, power…
We’re all self-haters now
As an American coming of age at the fag end of the 1960s, I celebrated self-loathing. Everything about the United…
High culture or state-of-the-art murder simulators?: Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt reviewed
For the past few decades, admirers of video-games have every couple of years mounted a new attempt to persuade the…
Nine reasons to be cheerful this year
Since it’s the first week of the New Year I’m going to pretend the bad stuff isn’t happening and focus…
Poor conduct
Last weekend Daniel Barenboim brought the Staatskapelle Berlin to perform at the BBC Proms for a cycle of Elgar’s symphonies.…
Free as a jailbird
Food programmes are having a strange effect on me: I watch them and feel nauseated. Masterchef, The Great British Bake…
This London mayoral race will feature something new: boredom
London, 2012. It’s Olympic year, and east London is sprouting anew, and our city feels like the capital of the…
Ancient and Modern
In Living with Difference, a think-tank report on the problems raised by a multi-faith UK, the chair Baroness Butler-Sloss says…
You can’t force low-income people to go to an art gallery or the theatre if they don’t want to
I went last week to see the justly praised production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers at English National Opera, and I…
In praise of Milton Keynes
Who would ever have thought it, but I have become quite fond of Milton Keynes. Although I live slightly closer…
