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Home truths on wanderlust
Michael Palin, fresh from the success of another BBC travel series, speaks to Gerald Isaaman about his new book and the changes in his life that stopped him from wandering too far this time
WATCH out for Michael Palin next time you are on Hampstead Heath. He won’t be jogging up Parliament Hill... > more |
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Tribute to Heath-Stubbs - NINE months after the death of the blind poet John Heath-Stubbs, a host of celebrated poets will congregate in St James’s Church... > more
How the young Joe went from peasant to Lenin’s fixer - STALIN, like Hitler, was an outsider. Born December 17 1877 as Josef Vissarionovitch Djugushvili... > more
An alternative agenda for Brown? - I’M at last convinced that history marches backward.In the 1880s the future Conservative Prime Minister Disraeli wrote... > more
The Guantanamo allotment – a distraction from torture - FOR a guy who has had razor blades taken to his penis for five months he retains a fantastic sense of ...>more
Women stay true to the ideals of the beautiful game - EVER dreamed you played for England? I have: about 600 times. Let me tell you, it was exhausting. Every ...>more
Red hot object of desire - Alan Bate' s Women in Love (1969) – a cinematic exercise, viewed by some as homo-eroticism, which still sexually disturbs...>more
Anger that lost its focus - COLIN Wilson an nounced in his early teens that he was a genius and has consistently insisted that to be true. Nevertheless, the ...>more
Poor sell: organism that’s to die for - MITOCHONDRIA are small components in our cells and there may be hundreds in each cell. Their function is to provide the ...>more
Poems for the child that lies within - MIMI Khalvati was born in Tehran, grew up on the Isle of Wight, and trained at the Drama Centre in Kentish Town. She is a well-loved...>more
Jewel in the crown of the last White Rajah - IT is not generally realised that the British Empire was at its greatest extent after the Second World War... > more
Heavy tread into virgin territory - THIS is half a book, and a remarkable novella as such – one that examines in detail all the elements of love and lust on a honey moon ...>more
In search of strangers - THE novelist Evelyn Waugh once created a fictional young woman prone to travel, who would send back cryptic postcards from exotic places. ...>more
Thoughts for the day on a brave bishop - HERE are many paradoxes that lie unsolved in this insightful biography of Richard Harries, the recently retired ...>more
A half life lost inside the Shelley closed circle - POOR Fanny Wollstonecraft. We don’t even know what she looked like; only the off-hand remarks... > more
Letters from a poet’s heart - HE was small, modest, shy, the apologetic son of pathetically poor immigrants from Lithuania. The handful of books about... > more
Inside the mind of a lyrical iconoclast - LEAVING Shakespeare out we must sometimes ask: “Who is the greatest English poet?” In considering... > more
It was the best of times and the worst of times - CHRISTOPHER Barker is the son of the writer Elizabeth Smart and the notorious poet, George Barker... > more
The ‘celebrities’ who went back for more - WHAT is it that makes people so brilliantly brave and oblivious of danger when their country is engulfed by war... > more
Sixty, and still single - ON August 15, India will celebrate the 60th anniversary of independence from Britain. To the surprise and satisfaction... > more
One man’s comedy of terrors - IS it journalism or stand-up? The political activist Mark Thomas’s show blurs the boundaries to great effect... > more
Step-by-step guide to making a movie - MAKING a movie was once an elitist, prohibitively expensive activity that the average person could only dream of... > more
Republican Foot, the admirer of the Queen - Vanessa, his terrier dog, regularly sat on the back seat of the chauffeur-driven car when Michael Foot left Whitehall... > more
Sir Sydney’s garden for the gardenless - THE party was a knees-up fit for the newly crowned king. Scantily clad satyrs danced around a fountain that had... > more
John Major’s ‘slush puppy for the very rich’ - PRIME ministers and cooking prove to be a recipe for disaster in Peter Gladwin’s entertaining new cookery book... > more
Thatcher’s children - AS someone who was a member of all Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinets, I was naturally fascinated to read Simon Jenkins’ book. > more
A pictorial history of St Joan’s theatre workshop - A BLEAK November day in 1953 in Stratford, east London, heralded a momentous day in the theatrical and... > more
Pick up a Penguin, or a Bob Dylan... - PETER Stothard is the former editor of The Times and the current editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He is also on the... > more
Michael’s fantasy island for kids and grown-ups - IT is perhaps not surprising to find one of our greatest children’s writers has shared his home with hundreds of... > more
The last of the fierce, individual history boys - THE last time I saw him he was hurrying down Hampstead Road looking more than ever like the White Rabbit in the... > more
Funnyman Griff’s journey to his past - IT is remarkable how objective history is, says Griff Rhys Jones. “It is an obvious point,” he says, “but one which really came... > more
The women who are far from veiled - IF you believe what you read then you probably imagine Arab women are quiet victims of oppressive, hopelessly... > more
Who’s ever heard of Mr Virginia Woolf? - THE only time I met the famous art critic Kenneth Clark (Lord Clark of Civilisation), he told me that for him there were... > more
The twelve days which shook Victor’s world - HUNGARY and Hampstead play a vital role in the life of Victor Sebestyen. It was in Budapest that he was born... > more
The enigma that was Katharine Hepburn - WE were sitting in the Californian sunshine, Spencer Tracy and I, in orange canvas chairs outside a Bel-Air mansion... > more
Send in the clowns – but no elephants - ONCE upon a time there was a circus, which had no performing animals apart from a duck who would quack to the sound... > more
Romeo and Juliet who fled the Nazis in a boat -
MICHAEL Arditti did not set out to write a parable. But his new novel A Sea Change is more than just a love story. > more
A true free spirit of the Middle East - BOMBS over Beirut, bullets across Baghdad: Abdelrahman Munif must be wailing in his grave. > more
Victorian masses and leisure principle - THE consumer society, says Judith Flanders, starts here. With the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was launched, to the... > more
The dutiful daughter of our greatest writer - SHE was the third child of ten, the second daughter of England’s greatest novelist and social campaigner... > more |
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