My brothers were both warriors in Lycra, while what I did had no value whatsoever – and still doesn’t.
Grutas Park, in Lithuania, is one of the world's strangest tourist attractions. But it also forces us to ask: how should we commemorate genocide?
It was the only bank this summer to fail a European stress test, requiring emergency recapitalisation. What next for Siena's "critical lung”?
My week, from babbling at Michael Gove to chatting Botox with Ed Balls and a trip to Stroke City.
A new book reveals the spiteful after life of Downing Street's unlikely spin doctor.
More than any of her recent predecessors, the Prime Minister seems willing to challenge the economic and political orthodoxies of the past 35 years.
All the best gossip from party conference, including why Dennis Skinner is now the MP for Selfie Central.
According to the former Chancellor, “nobody in the government has the first idea of what they’re going to do next”.
A radical internationalism is needed to democratise the EU and breathe new life into the left.
It is easy to understand Cameron’s frustrations with May. But her convictions have been tested over a long period than his.
On why Trump is the back-row kid, Tracey Emin’s granny slippers, and why policy “nudges” can’t be shoves.
The Conservative policy board chair on the meaning of Brexit, state intervention and whether "Mayism" exists.
My week, from havoc in the Labour family to a sublime act of real-life trolling – via a shopping centre.
Learning to live with epilepsy.
In different ways, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are “puritans”. Each has a strict view of what public life should be – and their manners are a rebuke to the low hucksterism that has disfigured our politics.
Ruth Davidson is a Christian, gay, kick-boxing army reservist who made a passionate case for the EU and has transformed the fortunes of the Tories in Scotland.
“a soldier of an unknown army / fell here / to the bottom of the fog”
Rawer and more unevenly wrought than Alone in Berlin, Nightmare is the necessary precursor to that great work.
I confess to being baffled by Coetzee’s novel The Schooldays of Jesus.
Minoo Dinshaw’s Outlandish Knight revels in the life of an untypical historian.
Springsteen’s memoir, Born to Run, is the most accomplished of the recent cavalcade of rock autobiographies.
Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement poses two, thought-provoking questions about how we write about climate change.
A Farewell to Ice reveals the sad truth: one day Arctic ice, our planet's air con, will be gone.
The Pigeon Tunnel turns to the two, ambigious relationships that fuel le Carré's work: that with his family, and with a secret world.
How different the fate of the Lib Dems could have been if they had begun the coalition with more understanding of government, says the former shadow foreign secretary.
“The public need to see what they’re paying for,” says Huw Robinson during Radio 3's instillation at the Southbank Centre.
The lead singer of The Divine Comedy on the genius of Pulp, Squeeze, and the Human League.
Balls is clear that his defeat in his constituency in 2015 was a prelude to a funeral and life outside politics. I don’t believe a word of it.
Five more episodes to go, after which its “feminist” writer (his word, not mine), Allan Cubitt, should pull the plug on it at last. Plus: Damned.
Radcliffe is dead good in Swiss Army Man – meaning he is both good, and dead. Plus: Deepwater Horizon.
Noel Malcolm on Minoo Dinshaw’s Outlandish Knight, a life of an untypical historian, Steven Runciman.
Old folks dancing, a toy monkey and thirty Swiss francs a day. I never want to come home again.
Autumn is here, and I'm heading out with Ivor Cutler, forager, poet, songwriter and sage.
The Björk Digital “exhibition” turns out to be more mundane, but at least she doesn't need a large brandy to appear as a hologram.
You’ve got to feel sorry for our top teams. It's hard work, maintaining their brand.
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