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At 75, the 'rock star' intellectual Slavoj Zizek is at war with the left. But is his politics a strange source of sanity? It's a problem when you and your [...]

The duo built their pop career on subtext and restraint. In their sixties, they are both entirely public and utterly private I meet the Pet Shop Boys in a small [...]

"You're coming to all this at a funny time" my colleague said, as we crossed the road to meet the people from EMI. It was December 2007 and the label [...]

What is Sabrina Carpenter, and why is she suddenly so popular? In our chauvinist past, women singers were automatically compared to other women singers, and this is worth reprising at [...]

The Archbishop of Canterbury is busying himself around the kitchen hatch at a church hall in Market Drayton, Shropshire. He doesn't look entirely like an archbishop. His predecessor, Rowan Williams, [...]

The pas de deux in The Nutcracker--also known as the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy--is one reason people want to become ballet dancers, but it is also six minutes [...]

On 30 April in the lobby of a budget hotel in Liverpool, for a good few hours I watched a group of young people in leathers sitting out on the [...]

Joan Bakewell, 90 in April, lives in a complex of artists' studios with the feel of a Victorian almshouse: cottages with small gardens and walls over which, during the early [...]

Shortly before my trip to Maidenhead, Berkshire, I began to receive text messages from Michael Parkinson saying to look out for a BMW at the station: he'd pick me up. [...]

John Niven was working as an A&R man at London Records in 1995 when some men from America came to talk to his office about how the internet was going [...]

For two decades there have been plans for a statue of Nick Cave in his birth town Warracknabeal, 200 miles north-west of Melbourne. Cave was to be cast in gold, [...]

Antonia Fraser's two cats are Ferdie and Bella, named after the king and queen who turned Spain into a superpower: they shared a womb, but occasionally turn on each other. [...]

The Liverbirds: Our Life in Britain's First Female Rock 'n' Roll Band Mary McGlory and Sylvia Saunders Faber & Faber, 320pp, 20 [pounds sterling] Memory sheds emotion down the years, [...]

There is a fair chance that throughout her Zoom conversation with Bjork Gudmundsdottir, Greta Thunberg will be doing embroidery. It is a Thursday afternoon in Stockholm, after class, in what [...]

Searching for Dexys Midnight Runners Nige Tassell Nine Eight Books, 352pp, 22 [pounds sterling] One starts this book at the back, like a Japanese novel, because the author has tracked [...]

On a Thursday afternoon in June, Lisa Nandy headed to Knowsley Safari Park, half an hour's drive from Wigan. She had been advised not to drive through the monkey enclosure [...]

Her mentor Gordon Ramsay has called her the Margaret Thatcher of cooking. Where does Clare Smyth, the only British woman with three Michelin stars, find her iron will? For many [...]

After recovering from cancer, Tracey Emin has returned to her roots in Margate. Now she wants to secure her legacy--but how does she draw a line between art and stuff? [...]

On the day of a show, Jacob Collier will wake at around 2pm or 3pm and take a look at the weather. Not the weather beyond the hotel room curtains, [...]

There is a part of the brain--the anterior mid-cingulate cortex--that gets bigger every time you do something unpleasant. People who live a long time have really big ones, which suggests [...]

The plug for Lee Child's laptop didn't stretch all the way from the wall so he had to run an extension lead across the floor. It was 1 September, a [...]

Four men are pushing a yellow Triumph TR6 up two narrow planks to balance it on a small stack of building blocks. It is dicey work, with no one behind [...]

The windows in Ian Rankin's office stretch right to the floor. He lives just over the way, so his wife can look out and see whether he's working, or slacking [...]

Enough time has passed, Fran Lebowitz thinks, to admit she went to a birthday party on 9/11. The party was Downtown, and Fran lived in Midtown then, as she does [...]

After runs for the Tory leadership and mayor of London, Rory Stewart is criss-crossing continents--teaching at Yale, rebuilding in Jordan. Could he have been a great pandemic PM? From Arthur's [...]

The 66th Annual Grammy Awards Most of the concert ads in newspapers these days are for farewell tours. Bands are retiring because they can no longer run around on stage--but [...]

Each morning Tom Jones hangs upside down in the bathroom, ankles strapped to a board, blood rushing to his head. Inversion therapy is generally employed for backache, but Jones has [...]

Richard Mabey's powers of noticing made him the godfather of 'the new nature writing'. At 80, he reflects on depression, class and why the natural world does not exist to [...]

The 1970s film was deemed naff on its release 50 years ago. But it is now the cornerstone of a movement folk horror A few years ago there was a [...]

At 88, Edna O'Brien has won acclaim for a brutal novel set in Nigeria. But though she has abandoned her trademark lyricism, she is still trying to pin down the [...]

Richard Ingrams is fairly sure that Robert Maxwell accidentally fell off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, while having a wee, naked, over the side. He was not pushed, and he [...]

Where I'm Meant to Be Ezra Collective Even though a jazz band, Ezra Collective, just won the Mercury Prize for the first time in its history, this country still thinks [...]

Liz Phair's walls are charcoal grey, with mirrors, and doors leading to intriguing passageways, but it is difficult to have a proper snoop over Zoom, because Phair makes powerful eye [...]

Jayne Wallace was once at a party hosted by the Essex gangster Dave King, also known as 'Rolex Dave' or 'Muscles'. She had a funny feeling in her gut about [...]

Patti Smith appears in the upstairs bar without footfall, her slightly irregular gaze hitting the back window. She offers a quick apology and walks straight out again. Four minutes later [...]

James Lovelock, the prophet of Gaia, has just celebrated his 100th birthday. At home in Dorset he talks about climate change, green politics, the mysteries of existence, the resilience of [...]

The master of horror John Carpenter could write, direct and score his own films. So why did he give it all up? It can't be easy: you're misunderstood throughout your [...]

She has written hits for Rihanna, Cher and Christina Aguilera--yet has been dropped by a series of major labels. Is it finally time for LP?The factors that mean one song [...]

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story Bono Hutchinson Heinemann, 576 pp, 25 [pounds sterling] A book about U2 is quite a hard sell. It's the same four men who met at [...]

There was a lot of anticipation for the Spice Girls' second album in 1997: they established a premium-rate phone line for fans that you dialled up to hear 20-second snippets [...]

In the Nineties my father liked Bjork so much that one day my brother and I sellotaped a photo of her on his back. He managed a whole trip to [...]

Sheku Kanneh-Mason has already played for the royals and tackled the Elgar Cello Concerto. Where does the 25-vear-old go from here? Sheku Kanneh-Mason was travelling from London to Paris by [...]

Good Pop, Bad Pop Jarvis Cocker Jonathan Cape, 368pp, 20[pounds sterling] Who are those people who throw nothing away? What primal insecurities are they acting out? Rock music has many [...]

Journey wrote the Eighties anthem Don't Stop Believin', which is now the most downloaded song of the 20th century. So why did its singer Steve Perry disappear, to be replaced [...]

Twenty years ago 'four northern lads' brought their blackly comic vision of small-town life to our screens. Now the League of Gentlemen are back to expose the shadowy heart of [...]

In a decade, Lily Allen has gone from pop princess to stay-at-home mother--and back again. But one thing has stayed consistent: her raw honesty about her body, her relationships and [...]

What could a Boombastic Jamaican reggae character and a brooding Geordie rock star possibly have in common? An encounter in a New York boardroom reveals all Perhaps it is not [...]

Lisa Stansfield was the biggest British female soul star of the Nineties. At 51, she's back and ready to let loose on fame, Weinstein and bankrolling Tony Blair Lisa Stansfield [...]

The Chilston Park Hotel in Lenham, Kent, was once owned by Judith and Martin Miller, the antiques stars of the Eighties who wrote the Miller's Guides. It is a place [...]