Rock star physicist Carlo Rovelli on why time is an illusion
“I found something extraordinarily beautiful and extraordinarily radical. And I thought, wow, this is better than LSD”
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What Marx got right
Why Marx is more relevant than ever in the age of automation
On the bicentenary of his birth, Marx continues to be a key thinker thanks to his surprising faith in the individual.
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Hearts on their sleeves: what drives us to get – and often regret – tattoos?
In his Edinburgh clinic, the GP Gavin Francis sees more than his fair share of tattoos that ordinarily go…
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Kim Wilde Q&A: “If I’d never been outside, I’d never have seen the UFOs“
The singer talks gardening, pregnancy and seventies pop.
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Cult or culture? How three letters make the difference between good and bad
Cult is a way of saying: you lot are weirdos. Yet perhaps more of us belong to them than we’d care…
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One unexpected viral hit, and I’m reminded just how it feels to be the centre of attention
Fame, and social media, can flatten us out, making us cartoon-like, when actually we wish we were that simple.
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I thought I was at the vanguard of middle-class homelessness – but we’re everywhere you look
In a month’s time, K— and I will be competing for sofas around the country.
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Why seabirds remain the most mysterious creatures of all
The avian magicians spend months at sea, never touching land and taking only a moment’s rest now and then.
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Soul Music is Radio 4’s greatest labour of love – each episode takes up to five years to make
Now in its 26th series, the show takes a song or a piece of music and looks at its…
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Directors: please stop trying to depict “genius”
In an age of #MeToo, Antonia Banderas’ Picasso strolls manfully in the opposite direction, portraying the artist’s priapism a good…
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Journalism’s lord of misrule: the gonzo philosophy of Hunter S Thompson
Who Killed Hunter S Thompson? is a big and beautiful compendium of friends’ reminiscences of the infamous writer.
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The Young Karl Marx is a sparky retelling of the build up to The Communist Manifesto
One may conclude Raoul Peck’s biopic is so absorbing because Marx’s ideas remain so full of fire and so alive.
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Skam Austin: Facebook’s US remake of a Norwegian phenomenon
The remake is a chance for Skam to find an even bigger audience, but it’s also a bid from Facebook to…
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David Peace’s Patient X is a clumsy reimagining of the works of writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Peace’s treatment reads rather like a cover version in which the singer has added a load of unnecessary oohs and…
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You Think It, I’ll Say It: Curtis Sittenfeld’s new story collection shows how the personal is political
If social politics dominates these stories, national politics nibbles at the edges of them.
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A whiter shade of hate: the long history of the American far right
How Donald Trump combined the polar opposites of Aryan nationalism and the American Dream.
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Arlott, Swanton and English cricket’s class divide
A stockbroker’s son and a CND-supporting poet: the two great commentators embodied the divisions at the heart of the…
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The Good Neighbour
A new poem by Anita Pati.
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Rupert Murdoch saved the British newspaper industry – but at what cost?
Working under Murdoch in the 1990s, I realised that he didn’t want to dominate the world – he just…
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We must try to understand how unwanted virginity leads self-hating incels to murder
To understand their motivation isn’t to pity or excuse incels – but it is imperative to preventing more deaths.
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What the new cult of perfectionism means for motherhood
Precarious working conditions, social media obsessions and paranoid parenting are turning young people into extreme perfectionists – with alarming results.
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Expect the White House correspondents to cheer on Michelle Wolf? Think again
What is it with the White House press corps? Is there a more servile group of reporters anywhere in…
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The cult of the emir, visiting the future and the real motivation behind the blockade of Qatar
According to the Saudis, Qatar is a sponsor of terrorism and is too close to Turkey and Iran.
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Why writers are looking beyond the city to the rural, Leave-voting heartlands
Everyone in London theatre acknowledges that the white, upper-middle-class experience is over-represented.
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Why Owen Jones’s attack on Andrew Neil secretly delighted the BBC
The broadcaster enjoys such assaults, which undermine the usual claim that it is controlled by liberal lefties.
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Rosie McKeown’s Diary: Life after winning University Challenge
Having attended a comprehensive, I hope my appearance will encourage others in state education to apply to Oxbridge – and to…
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Crumbling Britain: the welfare state has created its own hostile environment
The ever-tightening squeeze on social care is just one way in which austerity is affecting my patients.
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Commons Confidential: How Amber’s voyage to No 10 turned rudderless
Your weekly dose of gossip from Westminster
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One man’s race to bring the forgotten music of the Holocaust to life
“It is an emergency – the survivors are 96, 97, 100 years old”
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Is Sajid Javid, the son of a Pakistani bus driver, the Tories’ new John Major?
After May’s disastrous election campaign and the fall of Amber Rudd, the new Home Secretary is now a heavyweight…
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Sajid Javid’s appointment as Home Secretary is yet more Tory fetishisation of “business”
Conservatives prize previous experience in finance over all else, yet it doesn’t translate to a great department of state.
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Leader: Why the government must abolish the net migration target
A rational immigration system should be based on needs, not numbers.
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