Culture
video
Biography and memoir
What Akiko saw at the centre of the Hiroshima blast, and the indelible mark it left
7 minutes
video
Art
Can art in a swanky restaurant ever be transcendent? On Rothko’s Seagram Murals
15 minutes
video
Film and visual culture
At the movies with Pauline Kael – in the arthouse cinema where she got her start
19 minutes
video
Music
Nick ponders the life of the mysterious girl whose used CDs shaped his teenage years
5 minutes
essay
Nature and landscape
Nature does not care
Too many nature writers descend into poetic self-absorption instead of the sharp-eyed realism the natural world deserves
Richard Smyth
video
Knowledge
A poet’s ode to the Hubble Telescope – and to her father, who helped to build it
2 minutes
video
Gender and identity
What happened when a gay Black man joined the Metropolitan Police in London
25 minutes
essay
Human rights and justice
Inside ambiguity
We are suspended between the inescapable facts of our lives and what we do to contest them, nowhere more than in prison
Andy West
essay
Archaeology
Nefertiti’s bust
How did this ancient and enigmatic sculpture of a beautiful Egyptian queen end up as fortune’s hostage in Germany?
Joyce Tyldesley
video
Biography and memoir
Meet Haddon Salt – the would-have-been Colonel Sanders of fish and chips
9 minutes
video
Art
An ageing artist’s unguarded thoughts on what it takes to be great – and why he lacks it
12 minutes
essay
Sex and sexuality
Idealising the predator
How did certain French intellectuals get away with preying upon young girls, shamelessly, in public and over decades?
Lily Dunn
video
Biography and memoir
Meet the Liverbirds! The bittersweet tale of Liverpool’s all-female answer to the Beatles
16 minutes
video
Ageing and death
How an end-of-life doula found her vocation as a companion for the dying
7 minutes
video
Art
How a self-taught autistic artist mines creativity from life’s endless variations
11 minutes
essay
Music
Maestro of more than music
Look beneath the surface of Bach’s music and you will find a fascinating hidden world of numerology and cunning craft
Milton Mermikides
video
Family life
An artist grapples with the loss of his brother, and the problem of canine abduction
7 minutes
essay
Spirituality
Where the rivers meet
Pilgrims have long sought in India’s holiest city an antidote to the modern West, but Varanasi is more dream than reality
Manini Sheker
video
Sports and games
You’ve likely never heard of the only woman drafted into the NBA – and that’s fine by her
22 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
Literary prostitutes
I self-published erotica to make ends meet. Could I follow in Anaïs Nin’s footsteps or was I doomed to churn out filth?
Sam Mills
video
Stories and literature
A trip to Montreal with Leonard Cohen in 1965 is a glimpse into a singular poetic mind
44 minutes
essay
Thinkers and theories
Vive Madame Roland!
She was a French revolutionary and a politician’s wife. But Manon Roland should be remembered for her philosophical writings
Sandrine Bergès
essay
Biography and memoir
Not only the stranger
Growing up in the shadow of a serial killer I came to understand that danger within a locked house might exceed that without
Alicia Foster
essay
Dance and theatre
To the core
A devastating loss can shatter the façade we put up for others, exposing our deepest, rawest self. A work of art can do the same
Julia F Christensen