Oddballs, loners and voyeurs
A prolific novelist and essayist, Muriel Spark disdained sentimentality – yet this masks just how strange her writing could be.
Culture
The politics of everyday life
Culture is neither passively consumed, nor handed down from on high, as the work of Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart reminds us.
The rise and fall of Robin Thicke
The best reaction to a man who courts controversy is total apathy.
My seven surprisingly okay hours with Atheist TV
News of a 24-hour atheist TV channel in the US was met with derision, but actually, it is eminently reasonable.
Autumn 2014 New Humanist is out now!
What science can tell us about the universe, Tim Minchin, remembering Stuart Hall, the "Trojan Horse" scandal, and much more
Never meet your heroes
In my youth, I saw an incredible aura around professional footballers. I only occasionally went to games, where they were separated from me by touchlines and advertising hoardings, so they…
The medium and the message
From his novels to his innovative use of social media, Teju Cole encourages his readers to think before they feel, writes Fatema Ahmed
Against nature
The films of Lars von Trier promise to challenge traditional ethics – but the director is too self-involved to say anything profound, writes Agata Pyzik
All in the mind
Terry Eagleton and Roger Scruton are the latest in a line of thinkers to suggest that, without religion, something is missing in our lives. They’re wrong, argues Peter Watson
Win tickets to see Stewart Lee, courtesy of Arts Emergency
Arts Emergency, a national network of volunteers who mentor young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, comes to London’s Bloomsbury Theatre on 18 and 19 June with a mini-festival of comedy and…