Gangster jazz: Nathaniel Rich’s King Zeno is a hugely readable high-class period thriller
The novel would make a great Netflix series, a murky pre-Prohibition thriller poised between LA Confidential and True Detective.
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Israel vs Iran
Aminatta Forna’s latest novel Happiness asks: is suffering necessary to experience joy?
Forna has a magpie’s eye for interesting facts and observations.
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An accidental prime minister: the underrated career of the pragmatic Lord Liverpool
In the age of Putin and Assad, British politics could learn a lesson from Liverpool.
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How classically trained German musicians in their mid-thirties became modern musical touchstones
Rather than falling in with the pretentious, dungeons and dragons world of early 1970s “progressive” rock, Can did their…
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Michael Brooks’s blend of fiction and quantum physics is bonkers but curiously effective
The Quantum Astrologer’s Handbook re-imagines the Renaissance doctor, astrologer, and mathematician Girolamo Cardano as an angel guiding the reader.
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Grown-up wild child: Astrid Lindgren, the steely Swedish writer behind Pippi Longstocking
In a way, Lindgren is a metaphor for Sweden itself.
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How democracy dies
The fundamentals of Western politics are under threat. So what’s next?
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Gareth Southgate is the perfect loser, which makes him the ideal England manager
Southgate, about to lead his team on their doomed mission to the World Cup in Russia, embodies a modern, modest,…
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The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel threatens to douse the genre’s spirit
Comics were, until recently, deemed a marginal medium, at least in the sense that they were critically neglected. That’s…
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The war between the Middle East wars
Conflict between Israel and Iran seems increasingly inevitable now the US has torn up the nuclear deal. But if –…
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War hero, novelist, moralist and liar: the many lives and disguises of Romain Gary
For 15 years he was a French diplomat, for ten a jet-setting celebrity spouse – writing a significant French…
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Men are applauded when they express emotion – women are just told they’re over-sharing
They are beta-male feminist heroes; while we’re big, sloppy, pitiful, embarrassing messes.
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The NS Poem: Nostalgia
A new poem by Blake Morrison.
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Why you should watch Childish Gambino’s violent, jarring music video “This is America”
“This is America” explores the twin spectacles of entertainment and ultraviolence as the bedrock of Trump’s America.
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The Old Vic’s Mood Music hums with disquiet about the gender dynamics of the music industry
Joe Penhall’s new play features a dispute over songwriting credits.
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Henry Marsh’s Diary: how will self-driving cars navigate British politeness?
I had visions of autonomous cars paralysed at street ends, unable to compute whether to be English and give…
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How to look at loss: Don McCullin’s powerful photographic exploration of Syria, The Road to Palmyra
Plus: the return of The Bridge.
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The Speaker’s last stand: will bullying accusations be the end of John Bercow’s career?
Bercow’s temperament has long been the subject of intrigue among those working in parliament, but in March it became headline…
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Taking the God out of Godard: Michel Hazanavicius’s Redoubtable is an irreverent portrait of the French filmmaker
With its promiscuous distribution of gold stars, the modern movie poster has come to resemble the uniform of a…
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The new battle over genetic privacy: How DNA sites became a police weapon
Police are using sites such as GEDMatch.com to revive historic crime investigations.
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The treasure trove of Samuel Beckett recordings hidden online
On a website “filled with the detritus and ephemera of great artists”, there’s a wonderful hunk of little-heard pieces…
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Harry and Meghan are breaking with a long and alarming history of wedding cakes
Theirs will be the first royal nuptials since Queen Victoria’s not to be marked with a marzipan-covered doorstop of dried…
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How John McDonnell is leading the surprise rebirth of British Marxism
At the Marx 200 conference, the shadow chancellor declared that “Marxism is about the freedom of spirit, the development of…
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The day I rode the Goodyear Blimp
The prickle of adrenalin in my eyeballs turned out to be prophetic.
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Crumbling Britain: one town’s revolt against a bankrupt council to save its local library
From a child at the High Court to pensioners planning a sit-in, Desborough residents are challenging Northamptonshire’s closure of 21 libraries.
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Flushed with success at backgammon, I find myself outsmarted by a challenged cat
“The British shorthair is an intelligent cat,” says Pets4homes.co.uk, yet my brother claims his is no smarter than a…
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Commons Confidential: The Conservatives seek revenge with a plot to make Corbyn pay
Your weekly dose of gossip from Westminster.
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It would be a serious error for the Conservatives to assume we’ve reached peak Corbyn
Labour’s performance in the local elections was modest, but the party has been confirmed as a contender for power.
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London is losing its people and its soul – is it time to move elsewhere?
In making economics its priority, the capital is in danger of becoming an arena of demographic churn.
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Any day now, I’ll take over the FA and put right 150 years of footballing mess
If NS columnist Ed Smith can select the England cricket team, I surely have the CV for sorting out…
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Bill Pullman Q&A: “I harvest fruit all year round. I can grow anything“
The actor talks exotic fruit, YouTube and living in a hotel in Warsaw.
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Think the US public will be disgusted by Trump and Stormy Daniels? You don’t have a clue
If you’d suffered half a century of declining living standards, your disgust would be reserved for those who’ve been in charge…
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Leader: We must listen to much maligned millennials – not just pay them off with a lump sum
Society’s deep-rooted structural issues cannot simply be addressed with a single payment of £10,000 at 25.
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Russell T Davies: “Living as a gay man is a political act”
A Very English Scandal: the former Doctor Who writer on hate mail, two decades of writing gay characters – and…
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