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It’s a kind of magic: Wood grain analysis reveals bass guitar’s link to Queen

The 1986 Warwick Buzzard owned by The Who’s John Entwistle is now expected to fetch treble its original price estimate at auction next month. A painstaking exercise in matching the…

Retailers and shoppers braced for Black Friday scams as sales activity ramps up

MPs launch inquiry amid warning of ‘generational shift’ in reading for pleasure

Record breaker launches charity to support children left alone in hospital

Why is this Budget so important for the UK economy?

Reeves pledges to ‘grip cost of living’ in Budget as tax hikes expected

Kate’s early years centre to fund research into tackling ‘technoference’

NHS maintained 95% of planned care during resident doctor strike, data shows

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COMMENT

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Sonia Sodha

The pitfalls of assisted dying

One of the first concepts new students of philosophy are introduced to is Isaiah Berlin’s famous distinction between “freedom to” and “freedom from”: an illustration of the fact that giving…

Simon Heffer

Correcting our Grammar mistake

During the Blair years, when recalcitrant Conservatives longed for a pledge to open new grammar schools, no class warrior threw himself into the battle against selective education with such ferocity…

Michael Janofsky

Defensive positions

When I was a kid and the Cold War was in full bloom, we were…

Lucy Moore

All that jazz

When we were finally released from lockdown in summer 2021, a hedonistic return to real…

Khaled Bazzi

Where hope takes root

As headlines veer toward the apocalyptic – from collapsing ecosystems to vanishing species – it’s…

Sam Fowles

Posh performance

I recently wrote a column for The National that provoked some, let’s say, passionate reactions. Two…

Peter Lawlor

Question time

A little while ago, I was invited to a small private dinner at a well-known…

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For some of the world’s best independent writing on the stories and ideas shaping our world

COMMENT

Sonia Sodha

Breaking the class ceiling

Aspiration and social mobility were at the heart of Tony…

Simon Heffer

Correcting our Grammar mistake

During the Blair years, when recalcitrant Conservatives longed for a…

Peter Lawlor

History’s false promises

In 2015, when interviewing Jonathan Sumption, Matt Stadlen asked a deceptively simple question: “Why does…

Christopher Hart

Hedge fund

According to the great Dr Oliver Rackham, hedges may be the oldest manmade structures on…

Nathaniel Tapley

Defenestration nation

Postmortems on the corpse of the Conservative party are much like those on real bodies:…

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Perspectives

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Snob value

Philip Hensher

Looking down your nose at “common” behaviour can create a constructive social dynamic

Birth room battles

Milli Hill

Women are not being properly consulted about their wishes during childbirth

The canary in my coalmine

Paul Moss

Close encounters of a conspiratorial kind

The colder war

Chris Lincoln-Jones

AI weaponry has already made sci-fi a reality, so the big question is: can we control the machines?

Perspectives

Free as a bird

Keggie Carew

A meditation on our complex relationship with wildness

Roaring Olympics

Boris Starling

One hundred years since the last Paris Games

Roaring Olympics

Boris Starling

One hundred years since the last Paris Games

The joy of text

Kate Devlin

Online life brings perennial pleasures

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PEOPLE

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TCE The Interview The Interview - Front Page

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Sam Fowles

Shami Chakrabarti

Lawyer and human rights activist Shami Chakrabarti defends the ECHR and discusses how notions of liberty are inverted to justify oppression

In Conversation In Conversation - Front Page TCE

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Joanna Grochowicz

Michael Palin

Talks about his new volume of diaries, his support for the Prison Reform Trust, the loss of his wife Helen, and his determination to keep travelling in his 80s

Reputations Reputations - Front Page

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Lucy Ward

Catherine the Great

The enlightened empress who inoculated herself to protect her subjects and advance science

FROM MY PERSPECTIVE - Q&As

Tom Curry

England Rugby International and Sale Sharks Flanker

Vince Cable

Former Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Secretary of State (2010-2015)

Lord David Owen

Former foreign secretary and co-founder of the SDP

Michael Holding

Former West Indies Test cricketer and Sky Sports commentator

Bobby Seagull

Maths teacher, author and TV broadcaster

Ed Balls

Economist, broadcaster and former cabinet minister

John Lloyd

Producer of Blackadder and Spitting Image

Rosie Holt

Comedian and actress

FROM MY PERSPECTIVE – Q&As

Rosie Boycott

The first woman to edit a UK broadsheet newspaper

Michael Holding

Former West Indies Test cricketer and Sky Sports commentator

Chris Smith

Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and former Culture Secretary

Joanna Lumley

Actress, campaigner and national treasure

Robert Peston

ITV News political editor and presenter of Peston

Lord David Owen

Former foreign secretary and co-founder of the SDP

Dan Snow

Historian and TV presenter

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CULTURE

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Author Interview - Front Page TCE The author Interview

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Helen Brown

“It is a religion that asks women to have many children and really sacrifice their bodies”

Hanna Pylväinen

Whiting Award and Balcones Fiction Prize-winner discusses her strict Lutheran upbringing and her novel The End of Drum-Time

Naomi Alderman

The novelist, gamer and Bailey Women’s Prize winner discusses tech billionaires, apocalypse bunkers, her fans Obama and Gates, and her new book The Future

Ruth Ivo

The former burlesque dancer discusses her fictionalised memoir of Soho life in Performance, the exhilarating freedom of club nights in her youth and “hatching” from an egg on stage

Tessa Hadley

The critically acclaimed novelist discusses her 1950s-set novella The Party with Helen Brown

FEATURES

There’s always whisky

Miranda Seymour

Jean Rhys, literary genius and trouble alcoholic

Acts of sedition

Pauline F Kiernan

Shakespeare’s Richard II was pure treason, so how did he get away with it? asks the author

Zealots not harlots

Elizabeth Sharkey

How Quaker dissenters became England’s first feminists

FILM

Dressing for utopia

Christobel Kent

POETRY

Blood Moon by Gillian Clarke

I Am Waiting For You by Risalet Merdan

Things to Consider in the Design of Your First Space Suit by Harry Man

Tight Little Island by Rishi Dastidar

There's a Walrus on My Windscreen by Ian Humphreys

ART

Prisoner with a key

Laura Barton

CULTURE

Author Interview - Front Page The author Interview

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Helen Brown

“The current generation don’t seem to be using their power for much more than shooting penis-shaped rockets into outer space”

Naomi Alderman

The novelist, gamer and Bailey Women’s Prize winner discusses tech billionaires, apocalypse bunkers, her fans Obama and Gates, and her new book The Future

Sarah Hall

The acclaimed novelist discusses her Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted novel Helm, writing a "strange biography" of Britain's only named wind, climate collapse and "radical optimism," and why sorority is the key to consolidating power shifts and positive change