Frantz Fanon, the Martinican revolutionary of the 1950s, has been cited as an inspiration for the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. But is there anything more to his work than a sophisticated justification of violence? Stephen Howe turns to a new edition of David Macey's definitive biography to find out
John Gray is one of our most celebrated contemporary thinkers, and an atheist. So why is he in constant, tetchy, conflict with prominent humanists – are their arguments really so incompatible? JP O’Malley finds out
Unlike some atheists, New Humanist editor Caspar Melville thinks that debate between the religious and non-religious can be fruitful. But after appearing alongside a pair of Muslim speakers at a London student event, he's having second thoughts
Sarah Ditum on the incredible true story of Thomas Day, the 18th-century Englishman who tried to use the ideas of the Enlightenment to mould his ideal bride
A brief conversation between the writer Arthur Koestler and the Nobel-winning biologist Jacques Monod, in 1969, planted a seed in the mind of the young religious biologist *Bryan Hamlin* that bore fruit more than 40 years later
Jonathan Meades' television essays are that rare combination of intelligence, style and fascinating facts which remind us of what television too rarely is: informative and surprising popular entertainment. His latest foray down the backroads of forgotten culture takes him to Essex, that much maligned county, where he finds melancholic poetry and religious delusion on the shifting sands of a land in-between
Stephen Asma has a fair old stab at writing a book about fairness but, to be fair, its fairly awful, says Craig Purshouse
Laurie Taylor gets up close and personal with Britain’s leading public intellectual
With the whiff of rebellion again in the air, the work of Victor Serge is being rediscovered. Not before time, says Owen Hatherley
Sociologist Linda Woodhead has just finished a five-year government-funded academic project mapping religion in society. She argues that religion is not disappearing but transforming. Caspar Melville assesses her evidence.