Current issue

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Labour’s U-turn on social housing for non-immigrants is welcome but too late

Rod Liddle says that metropolitan liberal ideology is too deeply ingrained in local councils, social services and the judiciary to be overturned by one panic measure driven by Labour’s sudden fear of the BNP

To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with

Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme

A splendid lunch with Jimmy McNulty

In the first of an occasional series of interviews over meals, Deborah Ross talks to Dominic West about The Wire and the challenge to an Old Etonian of playing an American cop

What Jacko needed was someone to say ‘No’

My defining memory of Michael Jackson — vulnerable, brilliant, otherworldly — is of watching him dance to the soundtrack of a movie.

Michael Jackson Notebook

The news cycle of a dead celebrity is a curious thing.

One day, the kharbouza will be mightier than the Kalashnikov

Afghan farmers can prosper by producing the world’s finest melons, pomegranates and grapes, says Elliot Wilson, but first they must be weaned off growing the opium poppy

No meltdown — but a deep sense of unease

On the eve of South Africa’s election, Janice Warman says its economy remains relatively attractive to investors, despite doubts about incoming president Jacob Zuma

The return of the old-school Thais

Eric Ellis meets the Wykehamist and the Old Etonian who head recession-hit Thailand’s new government, and asks whether foreign investors can have confidence in them

We don’t need this annual outburst of pipeline politics

The Kremlin wants Western Europe to be dependent on Russian gas, says Neil Barnett, but that doesn’t have to happen if the EU is prepared — for once — to show leadership

Chasing dragons: the Chinese army takes up art collecting

Elliot Wilson profiles Poly Group, a company controlled by the Chinese military which uses arms-sales profits to buy back artworks that have been illicitly flogged off abroad