The dark side of nature writing
The recent renaissance in nature writing also revives an overlooked connection with fascism.
Culture
How Orwell gave propaganda a bad name
Today, we associate propaganda with totalitarian states – but it also enables people to challenge power from below.
How Spotify’s algorithm is transforming pop
Spotify offers fans unparalleled access to music – but is it flattening culture into an incentivised blandness?
The enduring appeal of Armageddon
Why is our popular culture so obsessed with the end of the world?
Rediscovering Britain’s avant-garde
Ann Quin is the latest author from the English literary avant-garde to undergo a modern reappraisal – and it is long overdue.
Book review: The Impostor
Javier Cercas' "novel without fiction" is a fascinating analysis of a nation in denial.
An eye for changing times
The return of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy marks a revival of “nice” reality TV, after a decade of screaming matches and controversy
Warp-speed capitalism
The latest sci-fi imagines what society will look like if we colonise space – a universe in which might is right and there are no good guys.
Book review: The Gurugu Pledge
Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel's novel follows the fortunes of a group of African migrants trying to get to Europe.
Book review: The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve
It might be a preposterous story, but we are shaped by the Adam and Eve myth - as Stephen Greenblatt's latest book explains.