The Politics of Envy
That Howard Jacobson and V. S. Naipaul are non-members of the London literary establishment does them credit
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
China’s Great Firewall
The "Golden Shield Project" is blocking access to great swathes of the web, but Chinese netizens are fighting back
See No Evil
The "independent inquiry" into the radicalisation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab at UCL was a pathetic embarrassment
Hegemony 101
Antonio Gramsci's great theory has cropped up in an unlikely place — the A-level geography classroom
Ethics Girl
A bookshelf of Tracey Emin's personal favourites throws up a notable surprise
Flouting (Not Flaunting) the Rules of English
The teaching of grammar should be at the heart of the school syllabus. Without it we are killing intellectual curiosity
Incurable Romantics
The historian Tim Blanning and the critic Jonathan Bate discuss the place of Romanticism in contemporary culture with the Editor of Standpoint, Daniel Johnson
Bungles and the hypocrisies of an ageing Islamist
The problem with Inayat Bunlawala is that, well, he's just not that smart. It probably explains why he remains an Islamist well into his thirties. To be honest, I haven't written about
Appropriate Names at the Piano Olympics
The International Chopin Competition in Warsaw is steaming on towards its finals this week. The contest puts out a daily newspaper in Polish and English, in collaboration with Gramophone and English-language editor
An end to musical box-ticking?
This autumn the Independent's blogs are having a culturefest: they are partnering with the Battle of Ideas festival to present a series of guest blogs from festival speakers on the key questions
“A choice between a musical instrument and a gun”
Alisa Weilerstein, the wonderful young American cellist, is playing at the Wigmore Hall tomorrow night. My interview with her was in last week's JC, though I didn't realise until yesterday because Google
Buck-passing in the universities.
I have a piece in the Observer about the lamentable manner in which University College, London reacted to the discovery that one of his graduates had turned into a potential mass murderer.