Politicians mince or mash words for a living, and the virtuosity with which they twist meanings makes them artists of a kind. Their skill at spinning facts counts as a fictional exercise:... Read more »
Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You Listen Sign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. For centuries, the bildungsroman, or novel of education, has offered a window into a... Read more »
In socialist Eastern Europe, radio simultaneously produced state power and created the conditions for it to be challenged. As the dominant form of media in Czechoslovakia from 1945 until 1969, radio constituted... Read more »
If you live in a marginal constituency and felt bombarded by leaflets, billboards and online ads at the last general election, brace yourself. Last year, Michael Gove dramatically increased the limits on... Read more »
Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google | Wherever You Listen Sign up to receive our twice-weekly News & Politics newsletter. The writer and director Cord Jefferson has struck gold with... Read more »
Jonathan Glover’s new book, on the seemingly intractable nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict, quotes George Orwell on the Spanish civil war: “Everybody believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in... Read more »
Sign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. In the highest-grossing movie of 2023, Barbie, a literal doll, leaves the comforts of Barbieland and ventures into real-world Los Angeles, where she discovers... Read more »
This book tells the story of how early modern poets used the theological concept of grace to reimagine their political communities. The Protestant belief that salvation was due to sola gratia, or... Read more »
World War II produced a fundamental shift in modern racial discourse. In the postwar period, racism was situated for the first time at the center of international political life, and race’s status... Read more »