In the spring of 2024, I am finally able to visit Banishanta, the island in southern Bangladesh that has been haunting my dreams. When I arrive I find it is little more than... Read more »
Malala YousafzaiActivistI have loved going to the theatre ever since I saw my first musical (Matilda in London, when I was 15 years old) – and I love reading about it, too.... Read more »
The New York Times has cut ties with a freelance journalist after discovering he used artificial intelligence to help write a book review that echoed elements of a review of the same... Read more »
The unnamed narrator of Black Bag, an out-of-work actor living in London, has finally landed himself a role, and it’s a doozy. Advertised on the “admirably candid” website strange-acting-jobs.org, the role demands... Read more »
There has never been a better time than now for Man, the protagonist of Helen of Nowhere, to be a neo-transcendentalist. As a university professor, the lessons he imparts involve encouraging his... Read more »
My earliest reading memoryI acquired from somewhere, in my more or less atheistic family, a Ladybird Book of the Lord’s Prayer, whose every page I can recover in all its lurid 1960s naturalism. “As... Read more »
My earliest reading memoryI was six, and in the lounge in my first home in Manchester. I was sitting cross-legged on the grey carpet, in 1977, when I finished reading whichever of Enid Blyton’s brilliant Secret Seven... Read more »
What happens when an internationally bestselling historian, a Nobel peace prize-winning journalist and a former politician get together to discuss the state of the world, and where we’re heading? Yuval Noah Harari... Read more »
Trump sues Penguin Random House, ‘New York Times’ for $15 billion Sep 16 2025 President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit in Florida accusing the New York Times and its reporters Susanne... Read more »