It’s hard work having fun: Wives Like Us, by Plum Sykes, reviewed
A ride with friends involves dressing to the nines and stopping at a Marie Antoinette-style ‘hameau’ for sloe-gin cocktails – served by uniformed staff and filmed for Instagram
Are smartphones making us care less about humanity?
Generation Z were the first to grow up attached to smartphones. They spent their adolescence bathed in screen-light and now…
Alienatingly sweet and warm: BBC2's The Newsreader reviewed
When TV makes shows about TV, it rarely has a good word to say for itself. In the likes of…
The Facebook empire is beginning to crumble
When empires crumble they slide slowly at first, then the temple walls come crashing down. Facebook is not quite at…
The artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise
Stuart Jeffries on the artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise
The most important book on black Britishness has one flaw: its author was white
Can people of one race really understand the experience of another? asks Colin Grant
Takes us deep into an unknown world: Channel 4’s Inside Missguided reviewed
If it’s a test of a good documentary series that it takes us deep into an unknown, even unimaginable world,…
Biden’s half-baked celebrity world
Remember how all those celebrity endorsements worked out for Hillary Clinton in 2016? In the end, it seems, even a…
The new trend for ‘gender reveal’ parties sums up the mood of the past decade
OMG, the end of the decade is almost here, which means it’s time to start reflecting on what on earth…
‘Instapoetry’ may be popular, but most of it is terrible
Poetry is on a hot streak. Last year, sales in the UK topped £12 million for the first time —…
Be more carthorse: why we would all benefit from a little self-loathing
Leaving the auditorium of the Royal Opera House last week after The Sleeping Beauty, I passed a woman taking selfie…
The truth about food photography
While looking at the photographs of food in this humorous exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery, I thought of how hopelessly…
Cast off: how knitters turned nasty
At first glance, Nathan Taylor might seem the very definition of a ‘right on’ hipster. He goes by the name…
Snog a Tory: Why you should learn to step outside your comfort zone
Ew! Are you squeamish? Are you grossed out by meat, by fish, by eggs, by scales and suckers and shells…
Everything is now an Instagram photo op
On Sunday morning, in Puy-en-Velay, I climbed the 275 volcanic steps to the tiny chapel of Rocher Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe. There,…
A brief history of unicorns
After the England football team beat Tunisia at this summer’s World Cup, they celebrated with a swimming-pool race on inflatable…
A choice of first novels
Remember Douglas Coupland? Remember Tama Janowitz? Remember Lisa St Aubin de Terán? Banana Yoshimoto? Françoise Sagan? The voice of your…
Dear Mary
Q. Last summer a friend of my brother-in-law’s house-sat for us while we were in Greece for a week. We…
The sad decline of the teenage snog
Sometimes I sit my nieces down and treat them to tales of dating in the dark ages, before iPhones arrived…
Dear Mary: How can we make our dinner guests go?
Q. Many of our best and oldest friends have done so well they have stopped work. Meanwhile my husband still…
I found the future of privacy among the treasures of Venice
Almost all of Venice’s greatest treasures are on public view. Anyone who visits can look across from the Doge’s Palace…
Why I joined the smiley-face cult
Why my generation has fallen for the smiley-face cult
‘Likes’, lacquered cherry pies and Anselm Kiefer: the weird world of post-internet art
In the mid-1990s the art world got excited about internet art (or ‘net.art’, as those involved styled it). This new…
