Is Britain broken or great? Yes, I'm confused too. In a very different tone to his dire warnings about the global economy, David Cameron has found time this week to launch a new tourism drive under the brand Great Britain... more
Gully Wells knows that as she promotes her memoir,
her romance with a certain novelist will always crop up. But for Katie Law her own story was just as intriguing... more
You have to concede a sort of grudging respect for Sir VS Naipaul. His willingness to give offence is almost disarming; he makes Martin Amis look like an amateur... more
Nobody wants to be friends with an ex-dictator. Unconcerned, while he was in power, with the possibility that all his financial dealings may not have been on the up-and-up, the Serious Fraud Office is now said to be launching a hunt for Hosni Mubarak's ill-gotten millions... more
The red-tops reportedly turned down the disc of MPs’ expenses on the grounds that it did not contain sex. But they were being short-sighted about the knock-on effects... more
The Martin Amis/Anna Ford exchange about what may or may not have happened 22 years ago over the deathbed of her husband Mark Boxer is a storm in a tea cup... more
Hanif Kureishi, best known for his novel The Buddha of Suburbia, concedes that he’ll never be fashionable in the same way again. But despite envying the lifestyle of his teenage sons, he finds ageing to be ‘liberating’.... more
On Sunday evening I was caught up in a perfect rainstorm of traffic. I could feel my temples throbbing and stretching in a dangerously Gordon Brown/Incredible Hulk fashion.... more
When fantasising about watching one's own funeral you never picture the lame reality of how it will actually be, so pity the royals for whom this has come true: Demoted to "Other Notables" by the BBC...... more
Not for the first time, a Martin Amis novel has divided the critics. Some think his latest novel, The Pregnant Widow, is worthy of the Booker Prize, others think it lurches between farce and portentousness... more
New Labour has been worn away like a man carrying the burden of decades of struggle. The mantra "Change, or more of the same", will be the key to the next election... more
Tamsin Oglesby’s new play Really Old, Like Forty Five is set in a dystopian future, where Britain is desperately overcrowded with infirm pensioners.... more
Of course Britain needs to cut back and avoid becoming a Greek tragedy. But let’s not forget that taking on and managing debt is the way up the ladder — and one way to a more equal society... more
Martin Amis has run into trouble for being unsympathetic to the elderly after saying "Get rid of them all", although, faced with protests, his comments are “satirical”, rather than “glib” ... more
This week not even the sophisticated American security services could prevent a couple of polo-playing socialists from gatecrashing a White House dinner... more
Martin Amis tells how the sexual revolution of the Sixties and Seventies played a part in destroying his sister by putting terrifying pressure on women... more
First Lynda La Plante attacks novels written by celebrities. "Publishers, stop spending your millions on this tripe," she said at the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards earlier this month, singling out Katie Price for special opprobrium... more
Political historians of tomorrow will have cause for gratitude to Channel 4’s When Boris Met Dave for revealing the key formative influence on the Tory leader... more
"Look," the novelist standing next to the buffet said, pointing down the room at the new winner of the 2008 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. "He's on his third helping." He sniggered. "That's poets for you."... more
There should be a word — do the Germans have one? I bet the Germans have one — to describe the emotion of just having missed delivery of a fridge... more
Eamonn McCabe invites us into private worlds in Writers' Rooms where the secrets of creativity, memories of agonies and inspirations are stored.
... more
As the literary world mourns the sudden death of Pat Kavanagh, a portrait is emerging of a steely operator and a woman who inspired awe and fear in equal measure... more
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