Why I’m giving up cynicism at 65
As I hit retirement age, what else could I retire from?
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Syria’s world war
Funny Cow is a film about stand-up comedy: so why isn’t it funny?
It is unfortunate that nothing Maxine Peake’s stand-up comic says, either on or off stage, is remotely amusing.
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Syria’s world war
How Britain and the US are being dragged into the defining conflict of our times.
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David Peace Q&A: “If art is not honest, then it’s just decoration“
The novelist talks Twin Peaks, deadly sins and Sherlock Holmes.
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Knighthoods, chicken wings and plantar fasciitis: my World Cup predictions
We know which players are likely to go, but what will happen when our lads finally get to Russia?
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I’m not very authoritarian. But I might feel otherwise if I’d missed breakfast
Classifying people according on a scale such as authoritarian-liberal is a morally limiting method that overlooks our glorious mash-up of…
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A group of men united only by sport was once my idea of hell. What changed?
It struck me, during the course of our team’s annual pre-season dinner, how much I like my team-mates.
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Four roles, 41 songs and a few hours’ notice – meet the hidden star of Hamilton
“I am expected to know my stuff,” says principal standby Sifiso Mazibuko
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How a seagull, a short-eared owl and an oystercatcher have released an album
Man has always tried to make music that sounds like birdsong. Now, composer Erland Cooper has succeeded.
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Pungent as Old Spice and smooth as cheap nylon: the BBC’s Law and Order 40 years on
Revisiting the show reveals all the ways in which we, and television, have changed since 1978.
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Who knew that The Sopranos’s most persuasive fan would be… Bob Geldof?
On the 20th anniversary edition of Front Row, Geldof’s ever-building uproar of enthusiasm for the New Jersey gangster saga…
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Donal Ryan’s From a Low and Quiet Sea is a vivid tale of intertwined Irish lives
Roddy Doyle, in an admiring blurb, calls Donal Ryan’s fifth book a novel, but it might be described equally…
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The poets’ home: how one small, heroic publisher shaped modern poetry
Founded in 1967, the pioneering Enitharmon Press established a new poetry world.
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Hamid Ismailov’s new novel blurs the boundaries between life and poetry
The Devils’ Dance is an intricate mixture of fact and fiction about the imprisonment and death of Uzbekistan’s greatest…
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When production went mass: how factories changed the world
Invented in Britain, perfected in America and super-sized by the Soviet Union and China, the factory has shaped modern…
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Playing it over and over again: how Casablanca was made
The story behind the movie that defines the movies is one of immigrants, timing and a “son of a…
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How dying offers us a chance to live the fullest life
The price of a humanity that actually grows and changes is death.
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Tory Heaven: the forgotten 1948 novel that predicted a Conservative dystopia
Marghanita Laski’s razor-sharp satire offered a vision of a brutal Tory government.
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The IQ trap: how the study of genetics could transform education
The study of the genes which affect intelligence could revolutionise education. But, haunted by the spectre of eugenics, the…
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Relationships over MSN and daily records of texts: my teen diaries are a timeline of the early internet
I'm lucky – when I was growing up, the internet was ephemeral, and without these diaries everything I wrote…
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Why Amber Rudd is a perfect fit for the Theresa May cabinet
The Home Secretary is disengaged, with a lack of drive and an inability to grasp a real political problem.
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Stefan Buczacki’s Diary: Remembering George Brown and the real problem with Countryfile
They threw away the mould when they made Labour’s former Foreign Secretary George Brown.
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A new centrist party? It wouldn’t be liberal
There is no supply-side issue for a liberal, anti-Brexit party. The problem is demand.
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Why liberals were always wrong to idolise Justin Trudeau
The Canadian leader is a vapid sloganeer.
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One mother reveals two decades of her lonely struggle against the disabled care system
“There’s no support for adults,” Alison White was told, as her son Louis neared his 18th birthday. “There used to…
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How to defeat Pakistan’s corrupt elite and return wealth to the people
The Pakistani opposition leader, Imran Khan, outlines his vision for change.
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Commons confidential: Michael Fallon compensates for lost cabinet salary with new £50,000 side job
Your weekly dose of gossip from Westminster.
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On rising crime, Corbyn faces a difficult choice: be tough, or be genuinely radical
The Labour leader could be daring, if unpopular, by calling for prison and drugs reform.
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Exposing Enoch Powell’s racist lies in a second, almost forgotten speech
This month marks the 50th anniversary of that speech. But the one that followed in the autumn was perhaps more important.
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Leader: we cannot escape the consequences of Syria’s unending war
Since 2013, the barbarous Assad regime has deployed chemical weapons more than two dozen times.
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A Quiet Place is a metaphor for the terror of parenthood
Childbirth, a newborn’s cry, and volatile teenage emotions all become life-threatening: children are feared for their sheer vulnerability.
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