mining
From Cleopatra to Elizabeth Taylor, women have found jewels irresistible
Helen Molesworth has produced a magnificent history of gemstones – their symbolism, provenance, and the legends surrounding the best ones
Live the high life… in a mid rise
How radically left-wing is Labour’s proposed ‘renationalisation’ of the railways? Though militant Mick Lynch of the RMT union ‘strongly welcomed…
Dark days in Wales: Of Talons and Teeth, by Niall Griffiths, reviewed
At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution a mountain is being hollowed out for mining, and everyone is covered in mud or worse in this memorable and highly original novel
Close to extinction: Venomous Lumpsucker, by Ned Beauman, reviewed
Ned Beauman’s novels are like strange attractors for words with the letter ‘Z’. They zip, zing, fizz, dazzle and sizzle.…
The sweet and sour sides of growing up in a Chinese takeaway
Angela Hui was born into a life of service: Chinese takeaway service. Her parents had fled mainland China, where they…
A scandalous cover-up: the El Bordo mining tragedy of 1920
On the morning of 10 March 1920, on the edge of the city of Pachuca in central Mexico, 87 miners…
Sebastiao Salgado – master of monochrome, chronicler of the depths of human barbarity
Occasionally, we encounter an image that seems so ludicrously out of kilter with the modern world that we can only…
Perfectionism isn’t the same as integrity – as VW has shown
Not that I was much of a boy racer, but the sexiest car I ever owned was a 1982 Volkswagen…
The only certain winner in the Greek stand-off: cliché
The clear winner in the Greek crisis is the author of The Little Book of Negotiating Clichés, whose royalties must…
Matt Ridley’s diary: Why a Guardian contributor wants me beheaded
Martin Williams, former head of the government’s air quality science unit, has declared that the reason we have a problem…
If you have teenage boys who loathe the very idea of theatre, send them to The Play That Goes Wrong
It’s taken a while but here it is. The Play That Goes Wrong is like Noises Off, but simpler. Michael…
