Ben Barnes: ‘I would extend the basic income scheme to all professionally trained working artists’
Theatre and opera director on his new book, Side Stage: Theatre Writing 1984-2025; his wariness of celebrity actors; and his admiration for John Cleese
By Martin Doyle
Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus: A novel that starts with great promise but falls short
Most of the characters are puppet-like, reduced to stereotypes
By Emily Goulding
Sinéad Gibney on The Fall of The West by Owen Jones: ‘We all need to read this book’
The Song of Stork and Dromedary: the story of the Brontës reimagined
Elif Shafak: ‘This is the age of anger, anxiety, and AI’
The Silence of October by Sharon Guard: Black humour mixes with mystery and foreboding
The Last Good Day on the Internet, and The Internet We Could Have Had: How it started vs how it’s going
Poem of the Week: Before This New World Turns Us into Robots
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POETRY
Sci-fi and fantasy: Go with confidence into Grace Curtis’s cleverly conceived otherworld
By Declan Burke
Sally Rooney’s books will no longer be available in UK over her support for Palestine Action
By Martin Doyle
Brian Cowen: Anatomy of a Taoiseach - A ‘political life’ with little on the life of the politician
By Breandán Mac Suibhne
John McGahern, A Writing Life: Biography of literary giant who understood the human condition
By Eamon Maher
John McPhee: Encounters in Wild America; Hemingway Knows Nothing; Ninety-Two: A Life in Football Grounds
By NJMcGarrigle
Crosswords & Puzzles
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Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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