How to fix MasterChef
In retrospect, as has so often been the case with my attempts at Delia’s thrice-baked goat’s cheese soufflé, the question…
The architects redesigning death
Unesco doesn’t hand out world-heritage status to absences, but if it did, there would be memorials all over the western…
The joy of discussing life’s great questions with a philosopher friend
A higher form of love than romance or conjugal felicity was what Socrates offered in his dialogues, says Agnes Callard
The futility of ever hoping to give peace a chance
After 400 generations of martial conflict on Earth, mankind now faces the prospect of wars in space, as China and America vie for mastery of the heavens
AI is both liberating and enslaving us
It is becoming more than a useful tool, fears Neil Lawrence. As it takes over most of our work, we grow less and less efficient at doing what remains
Are we all becoming hermits now?
A new anthropological type is emerging, says Pascal Bruckner – the shrivelled, hyperconnected being who no longer needs others or the outside world
The firebrand preacher who put Martin Luther in the shade
Andrew Drummond traces the short, turbulent career of Thomas Müntzer, the rabble-rousing revolutionary behind the peasants’ uprising in 1520s Germany
Has Germany finally shaken off its dark past?
‘When it comes to helping others, we are the world champions’, one politician declared in 2015. But Merkel’s welcome to immigrants was pragmatic – and anti-Semitism is on the rise again
Immaterial world
VR ‘immersion’ is everywhere in London this autumn, but is it of any value? Stuart Jeffries takes the plunge
A sinister philosophy
Depending on one’s perspective, it is either a dangerous way of thinking or one that the decadent West would do well to study, says Mark Sedgwick
The British Socrates
After vital work for British intelligence during the second world war, why did J.L. Austin devote the rest of his life to considering literally asinine questions?
Sex, drugs and celluloid
Rainer Werner Fassbinder made 43 highly original films, and was planning another when he died – at the same age, and in the same way, as his idol
Insider art
Stuart Jeffries meets the prisonerartists of HMP Grendon
The mock king of Madagascar
David Graeber imagines the 17th-century buccaneer establishing an enlightened kingdom in the Indian Ocean where all goods were held in common
The cars that ate Birmingham
During my gap year in 1981, I worked on the 24th floor of Birmingham’s Alpha Tower for the Regional Manpower…
Resculpting the past
Rather than tearing statues down, Hew Locke believes in reworking them to highlight their place in our imperial history. Stuart Jeffries speaks to him
Be a self-sacrificing ant
One day the writer and artist James Bridle rented a hatchback, taped a smartphone to the steering wheel and installed…
Renaissance radical
‘Camp,’ wrote Susan Sontag, ‘is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l’oeil insects and cracks in…
A new Arab spring?
Stuart Jeffries on Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene
An anarchist cri de coeur
Ten years ago, David Graeber was a leading figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He and his fellow protesters…
The eyes have it
Stuart Jeffries on the tyranny of the visual
Beano rules
Stuart Jeffries on the cultural influence of the comic that said it was good to be bad
Heads, shoulders, knees and toes
We need to talk about Eric. In Jennifer Packer’s portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Eric N. Mack sits…
Apocalypse now
Stuart Jeffries takes the ferry to Orford Ness, a strange shingle spit on the Suffolk coast, where art mingles with death
The importance of feeling shame
Stuart Jeffries 21 June 2025 9:00 am
Shamelessness is now ubiquitous in our narcissistic society. But to the ancient Greeks shame was a spur to honourable deeds and synonymous with modesty and respect