Why bother with fiction? That’s one question. Why bother with history? That’s another. And they’ve both been torturing Zadie Smith, who has now produced the sort of fiction she once dismissed as “aesthetically and politically conservative by definition” — a …
Britain’s forgotten European empire
When King Charles ascended the throne to the sonorous chants of a Greek Orthodox choir, the compelling fusion of British and Byzantine ceremony struck onlookers as a strange and mysterious novelty. But in one sense, it was the natural result …
Capitalism has corrupted the Easter egg
Britain’s first chocolate Easter egg was sold 150 years ago this year, by the chocolatier, Joseph Fry. It was hollow and filled with sweets. Whether Fry’s primary interest was in the egg as a Christian symbol, or whether the creation …
Poverty is not inevitable
The energy companies are drowning in dollars, while a season of strikes continues to dismay much of the media. Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News talks about “taking on” the trade unions, as though they were a bunch of armed …