Plenty of atmosphere –– but only one ha-ha
If you want spice without obscurity, or the 1990s unfiltered, why not read something written back then?
Words and music
The bookish thrill of recognising the literary references of the pop artists you love
Snaps, crackles and Pop Art
Things you didn’t know you were interested in — until someone wrote a good book about them
Pains and pleasures of anticipation
The best sort of debut isn’t actually the author’s first book
Bret Easton Ellis — the enfant terrible who finally grew up
How he at last lived up to his promise
Secret sex lives in Victorian England
Prepare to fall in like with three new books
Standing tall on an uncluttered horizon
The best new fiction of 2022
Swansongs and southern discomfort
Three new novels plough the furrow between popular and literary fiction
Head boy and head-scratchers
Come autumn, competing literary establishments parade their best
Remembering an “effervescently affable man”
Kurt Vonnegut at 100
No Kemi, liberalism hasn’t been hacked
Badenoch’s party brought us to this point. It was no accident
The Tory beauty contest
The good, the bad, the ugly and the downright embarrassing
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We found the prawns you so thoughtfully left behind the radiator, but there’s still something here, isn’t there?
The triumph of Irish populism
The three major parties went with what is popular, rather than what is right
Not much COP
Holding the climate summit in Baku displays brazen hypocrisy
Escaping the digital dark age
We cannot rely on digital media to preserve our art and knowledge
Living in the Eighties
An exhibition of photos from a pivotal decade interests and exhausts
Is Keir Starmer coming for Twitter?
A campaign group with close ties to Labour Party reportedly hopes to “kill Musk’s Twitter”
A book about nothing
A new collection from Adrian Chiles is certainly curious
Why the Democrats cannot be populists
It goes against the managerial nature of the party
“Bold vision”
An action or choice can perfectly well be bold without being good
