Fiction
Knocking at the door of the Booker Prize
From an old-fashioned tale to a new-fashioned one, with a dash of dystopia
In defence of fandoms
One of the Internet’s villains has a brighter side
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
Putin, Shute and nukes
How much should we fear nuclear war?
Tabloid fiction
A new book on journalism gets it wrong
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
Murders for September
Past and future killings
Graduation blues
On the sad decline of the British university
Academia must not dissolve scholarship into politics
Scholarly rigour must be put above ideological virtue signalling
Black holes and revelations
Keir Starmer has detected a previously unknown budgetary singularity from whose gravity no tax cuts can escape
The horrors of VAR
Technology is making the beautiful game less beautiful
Izzy Hardcastle
Ornament of the book-world
Is Starmer the anti-Thatcher?
He does not have the right ambition and imagination
Why Ukraine almost certainly cannot win
And why the war is likely to continue anyway
On cockroaches and cancellation (w/ James Dreyfus)
How ideology is spoiling the arts
Kemi Badenoch won’t save the Conservatives
Her radical credentials are based on pure PR
Democracy is being undermined in Northern Ireland
Brussels and London are both being reckless about Stormont
Just the tonic
Rediscover the forgotten treasure of Australia: fortified wines
