Perspective Media | Read the world differently

COMMENT

Aspiration and social mobility were at the heart of Tony Blair’s “education, education, education” pitch in 1997. They are similarly echoed in Keir Starmer’s vision for Britain: he has repeatedly framed his desire to be…

Simon Heffer

When government goes too far

Having been bored into a stupor by a supposedly Conservative government’s serial failure to be conservative, something Rishi Sunak said recently suddenly had a voice inside me crying, “Whoa!”. His…

Monique Roffey

Only connect

Last month I went to Susheila Nasta’s 70th birthday party in Greenwich, south-east London. I’d…

Sam Fowles

Posh performance

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

Khaled Bazzi

Where hope takes root

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

Nathaniel Tapley

Cradle of libertines

England likes to think of itself as “the cradle of liberty”. True, if you think…

Peter Phelps

Hopeful histories

“No news is good news”, the saying goes, but the reverse is also true. Good…

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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…

Michael Janofsky

Defensive positions

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

Michael Janofsky

America’s third man

With all the focus on Joe Biden-Donald Trump redux, it’s easy to ignore more than…

Keiran Goddard

Falling better

The only thing slower than writing books, it seems, is publishing them. The mechanisms of…

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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

Spun sugar

Kate Devlin

Childhood books feed us Christmas dreams by the spoonful

Fuckboys have feelings too

Anouchka Grose

Attachment issues can disguise hidden trauma

More than the sum of our parts

Diana Thomas

Our common identity runs deeper than our individuality

Perspectives

All that jazz

Lucy Moore

The carefree socialites of the 1920s can teach us how to let our hair down

The Carrie Bradshaw dream

Róisín Lanigan

My generation's missing out on the naughties

Calorie counter

Róisín Lanigan

How arbitrary numbers altered my relationship with food

When machines get creative

Khaled Bazzi

AI is forcing us to rethink what human skill is worth

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PEOPLE

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TCE The Interview The Interview - Front Page

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Gavin Esler

Martin Rees

The Astronomer Royal on existential risk, the historic £100 stipend his post still pays and why engineered viruses worry him more than nuclear war

In Conversation In Conversation - Front Page

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Rowan Pelling & Peter Phelps

Rory Stewart

The former MP talks about global conflict and the possibility of his return to front-line politics

Reputations Reputations - Front Page

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Simon Heffer

Chips Channon

Brilliance blighted by poor judgment

FROM MY PERSPECTIVE - Q&As

Craig Brown

The Private Eye satirist on Haywire, Liz Truss as comedy gold and going blackberrying with John Stonehouse

Kate Mosse

The author and Women's Prize founder on her book Warrior Queens, her great-grandmother written out of history and the woman who foresaw global warming in 1856

Joanna Lumley

The actress on a Malayan childhood, Genghis Khan beating Trump and the books she wants in her coffin

DBC Pierre

The Booker winner on Big Snake Little Snake the rabid dog he lied about and what Mexico taught him

Jeremy Bowen

The BBC International Editor on testifying against Karadžić at The Hague, a brush with bowel cancer and Cardiff bars he'd close during play

Ronni Ancona

The comedian, actress and filmmaker on her mahout childhood ambition, the cat who smokes Rothmans and the wildlife agency she calls green spies

Rosie Holt

The actress and comedian behind the spoof Tory MP videos, on Partygate, Suella Braverman's "wokerati" and the Labour MP she fooled

Andrew Roberts

The Churchill biographer on George III, the 28 charges Jefferson invented and the Hamilton villain history got wrong

Robert Peston

The ITV political editor on his book Bust?, Trussonomics and the schools charity that's reached half a million children

Zandra Rhodes

The fashion designer on Divine, Freddie Mercury and 55 years of not getting pig-headed

Michael Holding

The West Indies fast bowler on Why We Kneel, race in cricket and his over against Boycott

Rosie Boycott

The first woman to edit a UK broadsheet on Spare Rib, addiction and the ladder Thatcher refused to chuck down

Ed Vaizey

The former Culture Minister on meeting Tom Cruise at BAFTA, his cousin the American chant master and what really keeps him awake

Wasfi Kani, CBE

The opera founder on Pimlico, the Merkel arts package shaming Britain and the racist messages that still arrive

Benny Higgins

The Glasgow boy who became a banker on Tesco, five marriages and Kwasi Kwarteng's brief reign of havoc

Wynne Evans

The GoCompare opera singer on depression, becoming a Welsh druid and being sent into Stephen Hawking's black hole

Vince Cable

The former Lib Dem leader on Strictly, the Murdoch hidden mic and a Quaker chocolate childhood in York

Chris Smith

The former Culture Secretary on being the first male MP to come out as gay, the call from Mandela and what It's a Sin revealed

Phil Hammond

The doctor, comedian and Private Eye columnist on the Bristol heart scandal, Jacob Rees-Mogg and why health is not what happens in hospitals

Tom Curry

The youngest England forward capped in 100 years, on meditation, mullets and Maro Itoje's scrambled eggs

FROM MY PERSPECTIVE – Q&As

Daniel Howell

The YouTube comedian on his mental health book, overwatering a bonsai to death and Mr Blobby

Ronni Ancona

The comedian, actress and filmmaker on her mahout childhood ambition, the cat who smokes Rothmans and the wildlife agency she calls green spies

Zandra Rhodes

The fashion designer on Divine, Freddie Mercury and 55 years of not getting pig-headed

Wasfi Kani, CBE

The opera founder on Pimlico, the Merkel arts package shaming Britain and the racist messages that still arrive

Michael Holding

The West Indies fast bowler on Why We Kneel, race in cricket and his over against Boycott

Ed Vaizey

The former Culture Minister on meeting Tom Cruise at BAFTA, his cousin the American chant master and what really keeps him awake

Chris Smith

The former Culture Secretary on being the first male MP to come out as gay, the call from Mandela and what It's a Sin revealed

Dan Snow

The historian on the eighteenth century, a picnic with Hilary Mantel, and covering Britain in windmills

Mike Figgis

The composer and Leaving Las Vegas director on Timecode written as a string quartet, refusing the Hollywood club and missing his friend Julian Sands

Lucy Easthope

The disaster planner and recover expert on her book When the Dust Settles, the Welsh word hiraeth for aching loss and a friend's correct snack ratio for the bunker

Wynne Evans

The GoCompare opera singer on depression, becoming a Welsh druid and being sent into Stephen Hawking's black hole

John Lloyd

The Spitting Image and Blackadder producer on twenty-one series of QI, why he left satire at 36, and Radio Barking, the comedy station that never aired

Sally Phillips

The Smack the Pony comedian on Veep, faith, disability advocacy and the son who's changed how she sees what matters

Robert Peston

The ITV political editor on his book Bust?, Trussonomics and the schools charity that's reached half a million children

Ed Balls

The former Shadow Chancellor on his book Appetite, the Granita dinner with no polenta, and a midlife crisis going really well

Lord David Owen

The former Foreign Secretary and co-founder of the SDP on two centuries of British-Russian relations, Brexit and being Steel's pocket puppet

Chris van Tulleken

The infectious diseases doctor, author and science presenter on what's really in our food, the politics of poverty, and his "anti-telepathic" twin

Lucy Hughes-Hallett

The historian, biographer and novelist on her book The Scapegoat, her D'Annunzio biography The Pike, and why the King James Bible is the reason reggae lyrics are so gorgeous

Andrew Roberts

The Churchill biographer on George III, the 28 charges Jefferson invented and the Hamilton villain history got wrong

Rosie Boycott

The first woman to edit a UK broadsheet on Spare Rib, addiction and the ladder Thatcher refused to chuck down

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CULTURE

MORE AUTHOR INTERVIEWS

Author Interview - Front Page TCE The author Interview

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Helen Brown

“Sex is the place where the animal body erupts into the life of the thinking mind”

Tessa Hadley

The critically acclaimed novelist discusses her 1950s-set novella The Party, why female writers dread sex scenes and male writers don't, and starting her career at 46

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

Francesca Beauman

The Persephone Books publisher discusses forgotten gems written by women and the imprint’s 150th book

Hanna Pylväinen

The Whiting Award and Balcones Fiction Prize-winner discusses her novel The End of Drum-Time, the Lutheran church she left at 21 and growing up with seven siblings and thirteen aunts and uncles

FEATURES

Acts of sedition

Pauline F Kiernan

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

Gothic delights

Elizabeth Sharkey

Exploring the history of a genre that first bewitched Elizabeth as a teenage Joy Division fan

There’s always whisky

Miranda Seymour

Jean Rhys, literary genius and troubled alcoholic

FILM

Poverty porn

Anne Billson

STYLE

Dressing for doomsday

Christobel Kent

POETRY

Tight Little Island by Rishi Dastidar

Hermeneutics by Rebecca Hurst

There's a Walrus on My Windscreen by Ian Humphreys

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

Blood Moon by Gillian Clarke

ART

Glances with wolves

Peter Phelps

MUSIC

Hop aboard the turntable

Laura Barton

CULTURE

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

The Whiting Award and Balcones Fiction Prize-winner discusses her novel The End of Drum-Time, the Lutheran church she left at 21 and growing up with seven siblings and thirteen aunts and uncles

Sarah Hall

Novelist Sarah Hall on her Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted Helm, why it took over twenty years to write a biography of Britain's only named wind, climate collapse, "radical optimism," and the power of imaginative storytelling to transform how we think about environmental crisis

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