Searching for mother

At the age of eight he stood by his mother's grave. More than 70 years later, he tried to find it again

Boyz with bats

In Britain, sport is no longer seen as a form of moral education. But in a crime-ridden ghetto of Los Angeles, a Victorian form of cricket is teaching young gangsters how to be gentlemen

The show trial

Thanks to David Cesarani's biography, Arthur Koestler will be remembered as a crackpot sex maniac. This is a travesty of the man who, for all his faults, saw the truth of both Nazism and Stalinism before the rest of his generation. What motive can his biographer have had for such a demolition?

Culture comes home

Anthropology began life in the colonial era as the "science of difference." Does it still have a place now that difference is celebrated and everything has a "culture"? Its new role may be to act as a a counterweight to evolutionary psychology's stress on the fixity of human nature.

Nuclear green

John Ritch

Nuclear energy is the only technology capable of meeting the world's expanding needs safely, without contributing to global warming. But misplaced fears about weapons proliferation, nuclear waste and another "Chernobyl" are preventing politicians from plain speaking

Sticking up for trickle-down

Not many people believe in the economics of trickle-down, but it does seem to work, at least over the long run

Getting depression

Why is there so much more depression about? And why do we still know so little about how it is caused or cured?

A sticky conversation

Kate Kellaway is disappointed by a little book about conversation which suffers from runaway enthusiasm undone by preciousness

The critical point

Literary criticism is seldom of use to the common reader. This collection from one of the best of the younger critics is an exception, but not without its flaws.

The bookseller

Writers used to be condescending about travelling salesmen, but they have long since joined the club.

The prisoner

This column has been appearing in Prospect for three years. The prison authorities are finally getting cross

Previous convictions

The author regrets his small role in the poll tax debacle and the beginning of the end of Tory hegemony

Brussels diary

Europe's united front in the banana war against America has come undone

Letter from India

India is in an ugly mood. But the recent murder of a Christian missionary is not quite so simple as it seems

In fact