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Jun 8, 201710 min read
The Burden of Retelling
KATIE MENNIS -Colm Tóibín's new novel and Helen Dumore's latest poetry collection revamp ancient stories.
Jun 8, 20174 min read
A Faceless Icon
SUSIE FINLAY - Me and Miss Winehouse.
Jun 8, 201710 min read
Liberalism Realised?
OLIVER BEALBY-WRIGHT - Liberalism is under examination like never before. Three new authors enter the fray.
Jun 8, 20175 min read
Faith Under Fire
LAELA ZAIDI - Trump's clash crusade.
Jun 8, 20179 min read
Where Words Fail
ELLIE DUNCAN - In a Hungarian dystopia beset by revolution, language stops working and alienation follows.
Jun 8, 20177 min read
Something Amis
ETHAN CROFT - Why does Martin Amis' "Lionel Asbo" fall so short in its parody of class and England?
Jun 8, 20178 min read
Making Luther Great Again?
BENN SHERIDAN - 500 years after Martin Luther nailed his Theses to a door, new biographies the myth and the man.
Jun 8, 20177 min read
The Galápagos
TOBY CLYDE - The Galapagos and a landscape of indifference.
Jun 8, 20176 min read
We Are All Prince Hamlet
KATIE MENNIS - Award-winning actor and director Derek Jacobi talks to the ORB about conspiracy theories and student acting ...
May 19, 20176 min read
Not Them
At one or two or three in the morning all you see are the faces. They stare from walls and windows, trees, street lamps, subway signs....
May 6, 20177 min read
Eloquent Sex
Fondue by A K Blakemore, Offord Road Books, July 2018. ‘If you are a woman, writing about your experience of being a woman, you are part...
May 1, 201710 min read
Where to Draw the Line?
Turn left out of Charlton Athletic Football Ground, walk 100 yards past redbrick terraced housing, and you’ll find yourself outside 67...
May 1, 20177 min read
Big Clunking Fist
My Life, Our Times Gordon Brown, Penguin 2017 Shortly after John Smith’s death, Gordon Brown discovered his was one of those professions...
May 1, 20178 min read
Maybe This Time
They say that you get the face that you deserve: Freddie Tapner has a beam carved onto his features. We are standing in a spacious church...
Apr 28, 20176 min read
In the Garden of the Mind
My memories are full of gardens. Not all of them are especially worthy; most are the dog-roses and pampas-grasses of urban parks. Other,...
Apr 28, 20174 min read
Bewildering Birdsong
I was ambushed the other morning by a jay. I’d never seen one before, or at least I’d never stopped to wonder ‘what was that?’. It seemed...
Apr 28, 20179 min read
My Body Was Not My Own
‘From my childhood I have no happy memories’. Edouard Louis opens The End of Eddy with a statement that is as political as it is...
Apr 28, 20177 min read
The Vatican vs. the Gentlemen of Stonyhurst
Ribble Valley: oak trees, pies, cricket, Catholicism. The pitch at Stonyhurst is beyond the baroque walled garden with its clipped yews,...
Apr 20, 20176 min read
The Lives of Strangers
I have read and learned a great deal more in my working life about the lives of strangers than I have ever learned about the lives of the...
Apr 17, 201713 min read
Not-so Sad Girl
Hera Lindsay Bird Hera Lindsay Bird, Penguin, 2017 Pamper Me to Hell & Back Hera Lindsay Bird, Smith|Doorstop Books, 2018 ‘It’s halfway...
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