Culture

Smoke and Mirrors

Wendy Grossman learns a few tricks from Jim Steinmeyer

Divine comedy

Popetown’s associate producer, Stacy Herbert, on the farcical story of how the BBC bowed to religious pressure

Throwing Up

Chris Paling is left queasy by Alice Walker

Heavenly bodies

Laurie Taylor finds himself at a feast that'’s impossible to swallow

Beats, rhymes and grime

As record companies play safe by producing bland supermarket pop, Caspar Melville hopes an unlikely contender - British hip hop - will succeed in bringing music back to life

Anarchist with attitude: Laurie Taylor interviews Linda Smith

Comedian Linda Smith, who died in 2006, was the president of the British Humanist Association. In this interview from 2004 she talks to Laurie Taylor about atheism, authority and her…

Legacy of Cruelty

Sally Feldman on a rich new novel by Jane Gardam

Awkward Questions

Andrew Tudor asks what makes a good documentary

Learning to think

Jonathan Derbyshire gets thinking with David Papineau

Diderot’s triumph

Haydn Mason consults the original humanist bible