Literary Prizes
Pains and pleasures of anticipation
The best sort of debut isn’t actually the author’s first book
Bad bets by the Booker
In 2021, is the state of the Booker still “not serious stuff”?
Lots in translation
As the winner of the International Booker Prize is due to be announced today, ASH Smyth talks to poet, translator and judge on this year’s panel, George Szirtes
Our Man about Town
On the merits of celebrity authors and literary book prizes
All shall have prizes
There are now so many awards that not winning one must seem a source of shame
Most Read
The martyrdom of Young Bob
On ebbing power of the political influencer
Grooming gangs and the truth
We should not give ammunition to deniers of the grooming gangs scandal
Why has Keir Starmer been so unpopular?
He was the perfect embodiment of a failing system
Babies need women
Leaving children with only men who are not their parents is foolish and dangerous
Stop ignoring the Islamisation of our democracy
The British state is bending to Islamism, not attempting to defeat it
Britain will be worse without hereditary peers
The expulsion of the hereditaries is neither fair nor pragmatic
Digging for gold
La fanciulla del West, Opera Holland Park
How the “Burnham bind” will rewrite British politics
If Andy Burnham wins in Makerfield, Labour has a bigger opportunity than people think
The centre-left is out of ideas
The new journal Arguably barely makes an argument
The masculinity crisis is a porn crisis
We have to do more to challenge the reshaping of culture by pornography
Literary freedom is in the gutter
The disappearance of a praiseful review for a “cancelled” writer is as disturbing as it is bizarre
The praises of a neglected vegetable
Summer calls for cold cucumbers
No gods, no monsters
We should stop projecting our neuroses onto foreign leaders
Who wants to be a patriotic millionaire?
More taxation will not solve our economic woes
Selling the commons
How Britain put a price on nature
Not exiles, but stayers
White South Africans are not abandoning their home