Books
Our friends in court
John Bowers reviews “Enemies of the People?” by Joshua Rozenberg
Should we listen to writers about their own work?
As Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads is set to air this evening, Alexander Larman ponders the relationship between a living writer and their works
Emerging from Sri Lanka’s lockdown: a morning at Colombo’s booksheds
A S H Smyth pays a visit to one of his favourite places in Colombo
Men and women and men
John Self reviews Sorry for Your Trouble by Richard Ford, This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill and Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
More plausible than real life
John Preston reviews Beneath the Streets by Adam Macqueen
The jokes must go on
Christopher Bray reviews Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen
Me, Myself and I
The hip young authors who write about their greatest obsession – themselves
It ran in the family
Alexander Larman reviews Fall of the House of Byron, by Emily Brand
Significant others
Selina Todd reviews Female Husbands, by Jen Manion
‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ at 40: A book that can change your life
Alexander Larman recalls the glee and disbelief at one of literature’s most beguilingly horrible figures
Labour’s economic policies are incoherent
Labour risks collapsing under the weight of its own inner economic contradictions
How Britain has imported Bangladeshi politics
A failure to take immigration and integration seriously means that Britain has to deal with other nation’s problems
The definitive Brexit book—for now
Shipman captures the compelling drama of Britain’s greatest peacetime political crisis since the People’s Budget
Taking the liberal mask off prohibition
The case for the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is morally and economically unsound
Was Houellebecq right?
Reassessing the French novelist vilified for forecasting the Islamicisation of France
It’s a M.A.D. world in Kubrick’s satire
A drama based around the shaky paradox of deterrence no longer feels like a dusty throwback
The Church of England’s race to the bottom
The Church of England should not be putting ideology before history
Only the truly privileged can be cultural relativists
It is easy not to judge appalling cultural practices from a distance
Fiddling while Canterbury burns
The new proposals from the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice are depressingly wrongheaded
Why was I the only reporter?
On the sentencing of the Rotherham grooming gang
The case for Jenrick
He can reform the party and take on Labour
