Book review: The life inside
In teaching philosophy to prisoners, Andy West is confronted with the shadow of jail-time hanging over his own family.
Culture
“I’ve come to see delusions as imaginative creations”
We talk to Victoria Shepherd about how ten stories of delusion from medieval to modern times shed light on a misunderstood phenomenon.
Book review: Iron Curtain
Vesna Goldsworthy’s beautifully crafted romance is set to the east and west of the Iron Curtain.
Book review: Sounds wild and broken
In his exhilarating new book, David George Haskell explores how evolution and sound-making go hand in hand.
A hundred years of heresy
A century after its publication, is James Joyce’s "Ulysses" still the greatest work of humanist literature?
How to dance with the dead
Two new books examine how we cope with the inevitable, and suggest that Britain has much to learn from other cultures.
In a word: “Process”
Michael Rosen's column on language and its uses.
Illumination in Hay-on-Wye
A trip to HowTheLightGetsIn festival brings philosophy alive.
With “Station Eleven”, apocalyptic fiction has come of age
In a post-Covid world, apocalyptic stories have matured and become far more interesting.
Book review: What Strange Paradise
A new novel by Omar El Akkad centres on the story of a Syrian boy seeking sanctuary in Europe.