Celebrity Traitors is obsessed with the past
The show’s line-up seems to have been selected from a decade ago. But that’s nothing to fret about
ByNostalgia
Nostalgia is a seductive liar
But its political power is real.
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To the young, everything is fresh and new
And I must admit: I envy them for it.
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The lost art of the landline call
Also this week: the ghost of Princess Di, and the end of the Caramac bar.
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In praise of the DVD
The infinite choice of TV streaming has led to banality and fatigue – it’s time to embrace physical media once…
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The contradictions of Arctic Monkeys
In the run-up to their headline Glastonbury set, the band defied the creative arc of their late career by shutting…
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How Pulp launched the second summer of Britpop
A Tory government in crisis, cargo trousers on trend and indie anthems everywhere – at the band’s joyous reunion show,…
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International Booker winner Georgi Gospodinov: “We’re living in the memory gap”
The Bulgarian novelist on the legacy of communism, the necessity of irony and why remembering is a political act.
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The curse of the Noughties reboot
From Peep Show to Gossip Girl, new versions of classic 2000s shows fail to understand why their time period was…
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Rachmaninoff’s enduring melodies
In his lifetime, his music was an escape from modernity – 150 years after his birth, the Russian composer bridges…
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The transporting effects of plane reading, how not to adapt Dickens, and why I care only for novels
I rarely see anything on television or in the cinema as adventurous as what can be found in a book.
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My epiphany came on a sailing boat off the Isles of Scilly, flanked by dolphins
I am not sure I'll ever get my head around the combinations of choice and circumstance that make us who…
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Is techno about to die?
And has trance music killed it?
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Michael Bracewell’s anatomy of English nostalgia
In Unfinished Business one of our finest cultural critics returns to fiction with a meditation on memory and national decline.
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