The invention of Stoppard
“It appears to have been a sense that it was all becoming too easy that prompted Tom Stoppard to resolve, on his 23rd birthday, to give up journalism and write a play”
The lure of totalitarianism
"Across the Western world, friends and families have fallen out over their diverging views on the populism that has flourished in the past two decades"
Sphinx without a secret
"Whether it’s the shadow government or the global elite, if it’s not one sinister cabal intent on taking over the world, then it’s another"
Inventing the sublime
As far as Rev Gilpin was concerned, he would have to rearrange Nature in his sketchbook until she became, in his approving term, “Picturesque”
The weird West
How would you complete this sentence? “I am . . .” Did you say “a journalist/lawyer/doctor” or “adventurous/intelligent/intellectually curious”? Or did you say “I am Arthur’s mother” or “Emily’s Dad”?
An ark in the deluge
"Libraries and archives are central to democracy because they are the storehouses of knowledge and truth"
Big Brother is watching you
Citizens of mature, liberal democracies accept that some things done in our name by those who guard us take place in the grey margins of the law. If the ultimate objective is
Bohemian rhapsodies
Caroline Maclean’s Circles and Squares reads like a roll-call of the artistic great and good of the interwar years — whose enterprise stands in stark relation to the mess of their private lives
Beat that
"Half a century since their break-up, the Fab Four grimly reaped to the tiresome two, the Beatles go on. Documentaries and dramas continue to be made, interviews are bigged-up, and last year,
Dangerous tribes
A chilling, compulsive investigation into online extremist groups