City comment: Anyone in search of proof that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" need look no further than the Retail Distribution Review - the blueprint for how financial products are to be sold in the future... more
Typical, isn’t it? You come back from your summer break to find the temp has adjusted your chair, changed your screensaver to a yellow bird and left a passive-aggressive note on your desk... more
A democratic thrill: the published MPs' expenses have finally "dropped". From 6am the inner secrets have been available online. Don't all rush at once... more
George Bernard Shaw declared Little Dorrit "a more seditious book than Das Kapital"; George Orwell said that "in Little Dorrit, Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached". This Sunday the BBC kicks off its 14-part adaptation of the Charles Dickens story adapted for the screen by Andrew Davies. ... more
For more than 70 years, Tribune has been a cradle of socialist writing. With the future of the Left-wing weekly hanging in the balance, there could be no more timely reminder of its importance to British culture than the reissue of Orwell in Tribune, a collection of George Orwell's essays edited by Paul Anderson... more
Paperweight and Coming up for Air are two little treasures at the Edinburgh Festival tackling the theme of the routine of our daily lives and the necessity of breaking gloriously free from it.
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Blake Morrison, Mark Thomas, Armando Iannucci and John Hegley have joined the line-up for the first London Literature Festival at the revamped Southbank Centre.... more
Modern art duo Jake and Dinos Chapman have satirised Animal Farm, Orwell's 1945 classic allegory of Stalinist Russia, for their new London show Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good.... more