It is liberal fantasy to imagine that poor handing of the pandemic has lessened the allure of Modi and Bolsonaro. They are learning fast how to subvert votingWhen the pandemic struck, newspaper opinion pages were full of pieces predicting the end of au…
Poem of the week: Thames by John Challis
Bobbing and jostling with assorted fragments, London’s unsettled river here loses and finds its human pastThamesAfter a day of keeping tugs and waste disposal barges,sailing racers, showboats and commuter clippers afloat,the Thames turns inwardly to fi…
Snow Country by Sebastian Faulks review – the collective trauma of a continent
The second novel in the author’s Austrian trilogy is a melancholic tale of lost love and reflection set between the warsSebastian Faulks’s 2005 novel, Human Traces, made explicit his ongoing fascination with the mystery of human consciousness and the f…
Perfect roast chicken, apricot tarts, cheesecake: recipes from Nigel Slater’s new book
‘Cooking is about quiet moments of joy,’ says the Observer’s food writer in this exclusive extract from A Cook’s BookYou could measure my life in recipes. Each one a letter to a friend, a story of something I have made for dinner, the tale of how it ca…
We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole review – sweeping account of Ireland’s evolutions
The veteran journalist and author delves behind the myths of change and boom to give a rich, nuanced picture of Irish life as he and others lived it“For all my life until about 1980,” Fintan O’Toole writes, “I had been told to think of myself as the en…
Always Red by Len McCluskey review – bluster of a righteous brother
Candour and insight play second fiddle to a romanticised history of the left in the former Unite leader’s memoirLen McCluskey is a chess enthusiast. During his 11-year tenure as the general secretary of the 1.4 million-member “super union” Unite, he ke…
Claudia Roden: ‘What do I want from life now? Having people around my table’
The food writer discusses her new book, Med, while Yotam Ottolenghi, José Pizarro and Sam Clark pick their favourite dishesClaudia Roden wasn’t sure that anyone would be interested in her writing another cookbook. “I kept telling my agent, ‘Nobody will…
A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris review – the man and the myth
A dreamer’s storytelling son reworks his father’s life in Ferris’s daring and very funny latestAny novelist is fiercely impelled to give their story a shape, to mould a satisfying journey along which ends are tied and consequences paid out. And yet par…
No more white saviours, thanks: how to be a true anti-racist ally | Nova Reid
In order for true diversity to flourish, we need to first become unswervingly anti-racist. That means doing more than watching a few documentaries or reading some books, says Nova Reid. Consciously ‘unlearning’ racism is the crucial first stepI felt ov…
‘Something magical happens’: the cameras helping refugee children to heal
We talk to the man behind an extraordinary project in Turkey, where children, most of them refugees, have been given old analogue cameras and taught the art of photographySerbest Salih studied photography at college in Aleppo, before fleeing Syria with…