From Amanda Craig’s pacy drama to The Weekend by Charlotte Wood, David Trueba’s latest and a sinuous novel by Nicola Maye Goldberg, this week’s best new fiction By Madeleine Feeny and Simon Humphreys For Event Magazine and Eithne Farry For Event Magazine and Hephzibah Anderson Published: 09:32 BST, 28 June 2020 | Updated: 09:32 BST, … Read more
One or two readers have been less than enthusiastic about this big, fat Washington memoir. ‘Bolton’s book, which is getting terrible reviews, is a compilation of lies and made-up stories, all intended to make me look bad,’ wrote one early reviewer, Donald J. Trump. ‘Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never … Read more
It was my turn to set the questions for a lockdown Zoom quiz. I didn’t want to ask questions that reminded me of exams, such as, ‘What is the capital of Chile?’ (1) Instead, I was after questions that were more fun and free-floating. Luckily, I had to hand The Prince of Wales (Highgate) Quiz … Read more
‘Knock! Knock!’ ‘Who’s there?’ ‘Theresa May!’ ‘Theresa May who?’ ‘That’s politics for you!’ On the other hand, perhaps we shouldn’t feel too sorry for the Forgotten Lady of British politics. The newly published register of members’ interests reveals that, since stepping down as Prime Minister last year, Mrs May has made eight speeches around the … Read more
Millions of people have campaigned to protect British bees over the past few years. It’s a subject close to our hearts. One MP told me he got more letters from constituents about bees than on any other issue – including health and education combined. Yet it’s only recently that politicians have acted to protect them. … Read more
1975 Increasingly disgruntled at being asked to move from their usual fields into cramped accommodation half a mile away, the sizeable Glastonbury herd of cows staged a protest, mooing at the top of their lungs during a set by hippy folk-rockers The Incredible String Band. Cows were mooing during Scottish hippy folk-rockers The Incredible String … Read more
1970 With the cancellation of this year’s festival, it is a good time to look back at the very first Glastonbury Festival, which was a singularly ramshackle affair, taking place on a single, rather cramped platform, The Coffee-Table Stage. That first festival was an uneasy mix of old and new. Joint masters of ceremonies were … Read more
Notes From An Apocalypse Mark O’Connell Granta £14.99 Rating: From the beginning of time, people have been predicting the end of time. Many of today’s shrillest apocalyptic predictions echo the Revelation of St John the Divine, which was written in about 90 AD. When I was growing up, in the 1960s, people imagined that imminent … Read more
Along with slugs, sharks and snakes, goats have long suffered from a poor public image. You might almost say that the goat is the Duke of York of the animal world. For centuries, the goat has been a symbol of sin, which is why the devil is so often depicted with a cloven hoof. Lechery, … Read more
On Tuesday, I wrote about the peculiarly vivid dreams many of us have had during the lockdown. Since then, I have discovered that quite a few of us have been dreaming about the Queen. ‘I’d just moved into the wing of an old castle and I was settling in on my first night to watch … Read more