When Shōmetsu Sekai (Vanishing World) hit Japan’s bookshops in 2015, its author, Sayaka Murata, was all but unknown on British shores. More Japanese books were starting to appear in English (notably ...

Is the British media complicit in the Gaza genocide? This week, things heat up as Alan and Lionel are joined by Peter Oborne, former Telegraph chief political commentator, whose most recent book is ...

When a young Russian singer suggested to Tchaikovsky in 1877 that he compose an opera based on Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin’s famous novel-in-verse, he dismissed it as a “crazy” idea. “Then, ...

On 8th October 1940, a Tuesday night of high winds, the skies above London were clouded over with 300 German bombers that had flown inland from Dymchurch, Kent; German troops were marching into ...

The first images of Neom that filtered out of Saudi Arabia suggested a generic science-fiction B-movie. Clouds of flying taxis lit by an artificial moon and random outcrops of swirling glass towers ...

Ahead of the recent Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection to replace Boris Johnson as MP (who’d stepped down in disgrace after being found guilty of misleading parliament), 25,000 leaflets were posted ...

There is a new permanent secretary in Whitehall, and his name is David Dinsmore. No reason why you should have heard of him: he’s been toiling away on behalf of Rupert Murdoch for nearly 22 years and ...

In Dublin—where Spanish students, British stag dos and American genealogists look for a good time—a statue just off the main thoroughfare has developed a groping problem. Next month, a protection ...

The central question of politics is, where should power lie? That implies the related question of: with whom? Liberal democracies, the United Kingdom included, have not allocated their power wisely.

If there is one meeting of minds I’d love to drag out of history and into the AI era, it would be that shared by Alan Turing and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The real-life hookups between the young father of ...

Is it fair to criticise a nonfiction book for what it doesn’t include? Most would argue that it isn’t unless the omissions materially alter the subject being tackled. And this is where Lissa Evans’s ...

Joining the protesters against the new inheritance tax laws affecting farmers in Westminster last November, the leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, wore a flat cap, checked shirt and tie, Barbour waxed ...