loneliness
A window on a fascinatingly weird place: Some Kind of Heaven reviewed
Some Kind of Heaven is a documentary set in The Villages, Florida, which is often described as a ‘Disneyland for…
It’s shameful how we have locked down our elderly
There’s a lot I don’t know about care home visits during this pandemic. I don’t know how straightforward it would…
The pandemic’s invisible victims
I sometimes pick up some food at Tesco for an 86-year-old pensioner who lives a few streets over. At the…
The art of negotiation: Peace Talks, by Tim Finch, reviewed
Early on in Tim Finch’s hypnotic novel Peace Talks, the narrator — the diplomat Edvard Behrends, who facilitates international peace…
A ‘loneliness pandemic’ could prove as dangerous as coronavirus
Adrian Woolfson explains the essence of pandemics – and how we can expect many more of them
We all need to be let alone —not just Greta Garbo
‘You’re never alone with a Strand,’ went the misbegotten advertisement for a new cigarette in 1959. What the copywriter didn’t…
A week of extraordinarily direct and honest radio on the World Service
The most inspiring voice on radio this week belongs to Hetty Werkendam, or rather to her 15-year-old self as she…
More menace – and magic – on the moors
Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney was one of the surprise stand-outs of last year, and a worthy winner of the…
Olivia Laing: homeless and tempest-tossed in the Big Apple
Like a lot of people, Olivia Laing came to New York to join a lover. Like a lot of people,…
Where’s all the joy gone?
Britain seems to be suffering from a dearth of lightheartedness
Colm Toibin’s restraint – like his characters' – is quietly overwhelming
In Colm Tóibín’s much-loved 2009 novel Brooklyn, Eilis Lacy, somewhat to her own surprise, leaves 1950s Enniscorthy (Tóibín’s own home…
