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Don’t feel guilty if you’d rather read a Fifty Shades of Grey sequel than Proust.
Former miners plan to vote for the leader of the far-right Front National in the final round of the French presidential elections.
Angela Merkel has accused some politicians in Britain of living under the “illusion” that the UK would retain its rights and privileges after Brexit. There should be no illusions now.
Mayor Joe inspires gratitude and loathing in almost equal measure. Can he stay on brotherly terms with the new metro mayor?
At 19, he was fitted with an electronic tag. At 27, he is the world’s top heavyweight boxer.
The unions have secured Labour strongholds for their favoured candidates, which implies that they are deeply pessimistic about the result.
Smart, funny and mouthy, Jess Phillips is one of the most impressive MPs from Labour’s 2015 intake. Now she's fighting to stay there.
From Gordon Brown to Theresa May, politicians' doorstep encounters are stage managed. But it’s hard to ensure that “ordinary people” stay on-message.
To grow up in the Communist Party of Great Britain was to be on the side of the future . . . or so it seemed.
The cat-and-mouse game between the poet Osip Mandelstam and the Soviet dictator could only end in death.
The Soviet state was born in violence and shaped with merciless determination. Lenin played a central role in its creation.
Western apologists for the Soviet Union believed they were in the vanguard of history.
A century and a half ago, Das Kapital, the bible of 20th-century revolutionaries, predicted the overthrow of capitalism – but also the rise of globalisation.
As Lenin led his overthrow of the old order, Russia’s artists engaged in one of their own
The brilliance of Forever FM sounds like a response to all those who claimed that Kay was merely a nostalgia peddler.
The novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirist on travelling in time, living without TV and admiring Angela Merkel.
Three new “swimoirs” plumb the depths of the question.
Paul Mason’s new play about Michel is admirably far from a hagiography.
Barratt usually plays the jumped-up buffoon who is never quite as classy, clever or hilarious as he believes himself to be. Unfortunately, that could double as a description of Mindhorn.
Trying to imagine such a thing is less than halfway to understanding it, but it’s a pretty good place to start.
Who most deserves to wander lonely as a cloud, in this hopelessly overcrowded land of ours?
It was difficult to assess his complexion because of the silver face paint blending his skin in with the metallic material of his outfit.
The rest of the weekend . . . well, I had better pass over some of it in silence
I like to see an ex-footballer doing well, but I don’t wish Mark Tucker luck at HSBC.
I sometimes wonder how the hell I’d cope nowadays.
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