the Observer

No nonsense in the kitchen

25 November 2023 9:00 am

The forthright food columnist Rachel Cooke has little patience with faddy eaters, ‘meditative’ kitchen tasks or the craze for Portuguese custard tarts

The Observer’s embarrassing John Stonehouse blunder

8 January 2023 9:29 pm

Oh dear. In their endless Tory-bashing quest, it seems that the Observer has blundered again. The release of a new…

When sexism was routine: the life of the female reporter in 1970s London

19 September 2020 9:00 am

This book made me almost weep with nostalgia, but heaven knows what today’s snowflakes will make of it. Fleet Street…

Nimoy and Shatner in ‘The Man Trap’, the first episode of Star Trek (September 1966)

Close encounters on the starship Enterprise

5 March 2016 9:00 am

For a show with a self-proclaimed ‘five-year mission’, Star Trek hasn’t done badly. Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Wagon train to the stars’…

Always prone to depression: David Astor c.1946

David Astor: the saintly, tormented man who remade the Observer

5 March 2016 9:00 am

Before embarking on this book, Jeremy Lewis was told by his friend Diana Athill that his subject, the newspaper editor…