Arts & Books
The best new podcasts in the UK this month
Chippendales uncovered, plus revisiting the highlights from the early 2000s
Chips Channon’s diaries—snobbish but irresistible
Chips Channon wrote witheringly about everyone—except Hitler. But his diaries still make for strangely addictive reading
Edward St Aubyn’s tragi-comic tale of human frailty
His new novel makes for absorbing and immediate reading
The best films to stream in the UK right now
The Mauritanian adapts the bestselling Guantánamo Diary and the deliciously mean-spirited Black Bear
The long decline of the British army
A new exposé of a class-bound British army reflects an organisation fast losing power. But does it take on the right target?
Keir Starmer desperately needs a philosophy—can Jon Cruddas help?
Despite some good ideas, Jon Cruddas’s new book is marred by his partial take on Corbynism
The best UK classical and opera this May
Glyndebourne Festival returns, plus the ROH reopens with a new staging of Mozart
Get it in writing: Why we need constitutions
In Linda Colley’s new book, constitutions fizzle with the energy of war, navigation and power
Philip Roth’s ruthless intimacy
Roth dedicated his life to literary and sexual conquest. As his biographers show, he was victorious in both fields—but at what cost?
The internet is chaotic. Is it also boring?
A new essay collection asks not only what the internet has done to our minds—but also how it has affected our souls
Why we need feminism now
Sexism is obvious to those who look closely—as women writers have long realised