Nick Griffin is not a sympathetic man. He completely lacks charisma and he doesn’t speak persuasively
Read full article...In re-imagining the relationship between WH Auden and Benjamin Britten for his new play, Alan Bennett returns to a theme close to his heart.
Not all writers understand the importance of maintaining product continuity. They think they are too good to repeat themselves. They try something different.
Not one of this year's Man Booker shortlisted novels is set in the present. Perhaps we don't have any contemporary stories to tell?
Whatever her other long-term achievements may turn out to be, Katie Price deserves respect for having so completely had it over the whole publishing world
Cultural history is a wretched business. It's not a discipline of any kind: not science, not literature, certainly not history. At best, it's a ragbag, well stuffed.
George III got it right, I think. He once said he was always glad to hear of the death of an author - because then he knew he'd got the fellow complete upon his shelf
As baggage restrictions on budget airlines are so mean, it’s crucial to choose your holiday reading wisely. Here are some books that truly deserve to make the cut
The censors can’t agree on Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest atrocity, in which he impersonates a gay Austrian fashion pundit
Harold Bloom derided John Updike as "a minor novelist with a major style". Lorrie Moore once called him "arguably our greatest writer without a single great novel".
We all construct the places we love, as well as respond to them. I spend as much time as I can in a rural part of France and the reasons I love it so much are eclectic, to put it mildly: limestone landscapes, Romanesque art and architecture, the orchids and the nightingales... But, like most Francophiles, I'm also deeply invested in the food and wine.
A new book states that ferocious marketing is distorting our natural human impulses. David Sexton finds the argument convincing
Three years ago, the Iggulden brothers made a decisive intervention in British publishing. They came up with The Dangerous Book for Boys, a retropackaged anthology of Boy's Own stuff and nonsense. It had sections on making catapults, building treehouses, skinning a rabbit and playing conkers, interspersed with little history lessons about famous battles and the kings and queens of England. Even more restfully, there was no mention of the modern world throughout: no mobiles, no iPods, no laptops or other such disagreeables.
If you have a toddler, you have no choice. You’re going to be watching more Waybuloo than anything else. Forget The Wire
Last week, the latest RAJAR audience research figures revealed that while radio listening altogether is at an all-time high of 45.8 million adults each week, Radio 3's share of that audience is just 1.1 per cent
The demise of the South Bank Show and the retreat of 69-year-old Melvyn Bragg from ITV are being treated in some quarters as some kind of cultural calamity. Almost entirely mistakenly, I think
After considerable dithering and havering, Carol Ann Duffy has agreed to take on the position of Poet Laureate
Anocturne is a piece of music inspired by, or evocative of, the night. Although the term was first used for short piano sketches by the Irish composer John Field, by far the best-known Nocturnes are those by Chopin (and the best recording of them is by Arthur Rubinstein from the 1930s, much finer than his later versions).
Most bloggers are bores. After some initial over-excitement about the form, it soon turned out that bloggers usually don't have special truths to tell. There are exceptions, though
JG Ballard's literary career followed an unusual pattern, beginning in abstraction and ending up in autobiography.
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