TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Philip Zelikow and Anchit Sathi on progress, AI and the death of the author…..
When doctors and families fall out over medical intervention By Charles Foster
Looking at John Berger By Margaret Drabble
Can literary culture survive in the era of machine intelligence? By Anchit Sathi
Why nations win or lose the technological race By Philip Zelikow
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features…
By Colin Burrow
What’s the point of literary criticism? In June the University of Exeter announced plans that might make roughly a third of its English department – one of the best in the country – redundant. Other institutions, including Canterbury Christ Church University, have stopped offering English degrees altogether. Most mainstream publishers now wouldn’t dream of publishing a work of literary criticism, as they happily did in the 1970s and 1980s. Even literary biography, literary criticism’s previously marketable stepsister, no longer brings a gleam to a publisher’s eye. The grassroots of the subject are also suffering badly. Since 2000 the number of people taking A-level English literature in England has dropped by around a third, to around 36,000, with an even higher drop among male students.
COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features…
Edward Impey admires the ambitious attempt to revive early-12th-century interiors at Norwich Castle keep in Norfolk
What did the Normans ever do for us?
Jason Goodwin examines how the 1066 invasion by William the Conqueror changed the character of England forever
Walk on the wild side
Nicholas Crane re-creates the 1,000-mile, 12th-century journey undertaken by Gerald of Wales, Britain’s first great travel writer
Architecture as power
The monumental castles and churches the Normans left behind still express their strength in stone, reveals John Goodall
That sinking feeling
Quicksand is the stuff of many a nightmare. Harry Pearson tries not to get sucked in
Arts & antiques
Artists have long been inspired by the Battle of Hastings, as Carla Passino discovers
Michael Whitehall’s favourite painting
The podcast co-host chooses an arresting work expressing movement and fleeting beauty
Save our seeds
Seed Detective Adam Alexander issues an appeal to gardeners to revive the Victorian tradition of gathering life-giving pips
The legacy
The fossil-hunter Mary Anning helped put palaeontology front and centre, finds Kate Green
Country-house treasure
The golden Jean Tijou gates at Burghley House in Lincolnshire catch the eye of John Goodall
New series: Countryside mysteries
In the first of a series on rural riddles, John Wright cracks the old conundrum of strip lynchets
Yell for leather
Corinne Julius meets the animal-hide experts conserving historic objects from their Leicester HQ
You little cracker
The neglected Kentish cobnut is making an overdue come-back, suggests Susan Low
Luxury
The runway returns and Amie Elizabeth White’s earthy tones
Interiors
Amelia Thorpe picks out elegant fittings to elevate the bathroom
Will Hosie asks what makes a pub a pub and eyes properties with a pop of colour, plus our writers have all you need to know this month and Gio Fio marvels at the reinvention of the north bank of the Thames
Out on the prairie
American plants may be the answer to our warming climate, reports Charles Quest-Ritson
Travel
Pamela Goodman roots around in the Nadder Valley in Wiltshire
MONTHLY REVIEW MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘India’s Ruling Class and the Global Crisis’….
In recent years, India’s ruling classes claimed—and perhaps came to believe—that their time had come on the world stage. India was the fastest-growing major economy, due soon to be the third largest, constituting a new global power. India’s biggest tycoons figured among the world’s top twenty billionaires, part of the transnational elite. Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that India would be a “developed country” by 2047, the centenary of the end of colonial rule.
It’s getting on for twenty-four years ago that I first read Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley (1955). Books tend to come to us when we need them, and it’s easy to see why Tom Ripley’s project of self-reinvention and triumphant class resentment was so appealing to me as a twenty-year-old undergraduate.
Few groups in history have been so variously defined, quarrelled over, misrepresented and appropriated as the Vikings. Their identity elusive, they have been passed around like historiographical tokens to the detriment of a deeper understanding of their cultural and political milieu. Neil Price’s The Sea-King and the Sorceress sidesteps these often sterile debates by examining the lives – and deaths – of more than twenty figures from the Viking Age and using them to shed light on wider themes, a bottom-up approach which is both logical and engaging.
A highly readable gallop through one of the world’s most complex political environments, The Cauldron is brilliant on narrative, weaker on analysis. Simon Sebag Montefiore has set himself a formidable task: to compress the modern history of a region extending from Morocco to Iran, and from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the wars of 2026, into a single volume. The result is an exuberant pageant of sultans, shahs, kings, colonels, spies, revolutionaries and assassins. Few historians could move so confidently from the salons of Cairo to the palaces of Riyadh, from Atatürk’s Ankara to Khomeini’s Najaf, while keeping so many figures vividly in play.
When Donald Trump fired him after just eleven days as his director of communications, Anthony Scaramucci thought his career was over. He had become such an object of ridicule that a crisis PR adviser suggested he lie low for a few years before attempting to start again. Instead, the self-styled ‘front stabber’ from New York – who had naively assumed that a successful Wall Street career could equip him for the toxic political swamp of Washington, DC – launched himself into a round of media interviews, choosing to roll with the punches.
Gordon Cullen’s drawings for Townscape, his guide to urban planning, lend the subject a beguiling romanticism
The long-running fair dedicated to Italian art rests on the quality of its pre-19th-century offerings – and there’s much to delight here
Paintings made during the struggle for unification and independence are a niche interest abroad, but a few gems have risen to the top
Businesses of all sizes might be forced to go back to basics if they want to survive
THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The forgotten health crisis’ – DRC’s Ebola outbreak passes grim milestone.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has just passed the grim milestone of 100 days since it declared its 17th Ebola outbreak.
What is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record could also become the world’s deadliest ever.
For our big story this week, Prosper Heri Ngorora and Rachel Savage report on the frontline health workers who say, as the disease spreads “exponentially”, they have been left unpaid and at risk of infection.
Explaining the figures behind the outbreak, and the race to find vaccines and treatments, global health correspondent Kat Lay answers five key questions.
And Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, write that tapping into community leadership and knowledge is essential to halting the virus’s spread.
Spotlight | ‘We will go on – but it will be more scary’
Dan Sabbagh reports from Kyiv where, as Russian missiles rain down, casualties are mounting and the mood is darkening
Environment | Killed by kindness
Scientists were surprised to find all but two of 12 grizzlies died within a year of their “feelgood” release, unable to sustain their high-calorie diet and inclined to approach humans, writes Rebecca Ratcliffe
Feature | A family at war
Meaghan Beatley tells the remarkable story of a young Argentinian activist who thought her father’s disapproval of her leftwing views was purely political. But one evening, a kiss goodbye sent her on a remarkable journey that continues today
Opinion | Marine Le Pen’s career resurrection
No longer banned from next year’s presidential election, the far-right veteran is a bigger threat than ever, says Mujtaba Rahman
Culture | Playing the bad guy
As his new film Bitter Christmas is released, legendary Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar talks to Ryan Gilbey about Donald Trump, Netflix – and being the villain in his own movie
For the thousands of foreign visitors who travelled behind the ‘bamboo curtain’ to visit Mao’s China, hospitality workers – guides, drivers, waiters, chambermaids – were unofficial ambassadors for the new socialist state, and the state knew it.
From the printing press to the internet, the spread of information has changed the world. How do we recognise an age defined by it?
In 1943 letters reporting starvation and death in Bengal began to reach Indian soldiers serving the British overseas. Despite colonial censorship, their testimonies revealed the devastating reality of famine.
The Victorian reading public had access to a vast array of classical literature from Asia in multiple translations by experts and amateurs. What did they read, and why?
An audacious forgery in the ninth century helped transform the papacy and the medieval Church. Its influence persists today.
COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features…
The legacy
Kate Green hails Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water, a remarkable tale of living with otters.
Fifty years young
The King’s Trust is celebrating half a century of supporting young people. Ambassadors explain the secrets of its success and longevity to Paula Minchin.
Country-house treasure
Intricate decorative ceilings at Thirlestane Castle, Berwickshire, catch the eye of John Goodall.
Alexander Campbell’s favourite painting
The Royal Academy of Dance artistic director is moved by a compelling nocturnal scene.
A tower house reborn
Mary Miers explores how the derelict tower house at Balgone in East Lothian has been transformed into a Classical seat.
Whisky galore
From illicitly distilled dram to tipple of choice around the globe, Henry Jeffreys raises a glass to the world’s most popular spirit.
Winging it
Mark Cocker adds the greylag goose to his Unloved Birds’ Club.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
James Fisher welcomes Joe Root back to the helm of English cricket.
Interiors
Arabella Youens admires a Blenheim estate house in Oxfordshire and Kuba is king for Amelia Thorpe.
Cool as a cucumber sandwich
This refreshing staple of English picnics is no sarnie-come-lately, reports Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she reveals its Indian roots.
Arts & antiques
Allan Scott, the scriptwriter and executive producer, tells Carla Passino why he will never part with a prized perpetual calendar.
Luxury
New columnist Justine Picardie admires the Highland influence in the late Queen’s wardrobe and Amie Elizabeth White presents a bonnie Scottish selection.
Clash of the tartans
What does it take to toss the caber and putt the stone? Harry Pearson muscles in on the heavyweight Highland Games.
Heart Nouveau
Robyne Calvert reveals how the bold Glasgow Style of art and design conquered Europe.
Travel
Rosie Paterson experiences the ultimate in luxury camping when visiting a conservation success story in Tanzania.
Rhythm and views
Three decades of dramatic planting has paid off at Craichlaw House in Dumfries and Galloway, as Kirsty Fergusson discovers.
Summer of love
A double bill of innovative open-air Shakespearean comedy benefits from dream casting, suggests Michael Billington.
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Fighting Over King Arthur’ – Marion Turner on a legend’s global appeal.
The versatility of Arthur and his legends By Marion Turner
Nigerian scammers and their targets By Sally Hayden
How William Empson viewed Virginia Woolf’s diaries By Mark Thompson
Frida Kahlo, iconized: ‘I would not like to become famous’ By Miranda France
Boomers Daily 