Current issue

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

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.

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

You know it makes sense

Let’s not get too worked up if Guy Gibson’s dog ends up with a PC name

Best and the worst of times

Simon Hoggart looks back over recent television broadcasts

A bag of Monster Munch declares the spirit of the age

Rachel Johnson celebrates the return to the rubbish holidays, bad cars and basic food of the 1970s. Scrimping is more fun than splurging

In New York, pregnancy is a form of tyranny

Alexandra Starr discovers that in Manhattan expecting a baby is all about you and your performance, rather than the child: doctors and websites give the mother-to-be no quarter

Winter drifts

What is it with snowdrops? Why do people make so much fuss about them, when they are so small and relatively insignificant?