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“Burying the soldier”: a new poem by Declan Ryan
It must still have been light out; he never would have done it in the dark. I wasn’t born yet, the garden wasn’t any bigger: still city sharecrop size. He’d have come home to see a khaki- wearing,...
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The Walk is visual magic – one of the few films for which 3D is justified
Thanks to the success of Gravity, autumn is now the time of sophisticated cinematic spectaculars – hence the arrival of Ridley Scott’s The Martian and Robert Zemeckis’s The Walk. Alfonso Cuarón’s...
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Simon Schama’s The Face of Britain shows the portrait Churchill wanted destroyed
Without even looking at Sutherland’s portrait, Churchill decreed it “a remarkable example of modern art”, cue much sycophantic laughter from his parliamentary colleagues. Simon Schama’s arms used to...
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Why is the government giving £45m to Roman Abramovich while letting a British...
Although regulations around steel make it hard to intervene, a way could be found to preserve jobs at the Teesside plant. Monday: Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI) announces it will mothball the...
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How harmful is it to drink from a plastic water bottle?
A recent study into a substance linked to low birth weight in newborns shows, again, that drinking from plastic bottles – and reusing them – can be dangerous. There is a growing appetite for reusable...
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“You’d be pretty if you shaved”: Miss Cairo and Jonny Woo on the trials of...
Stars of the London drag scene on performing for mainstream audiences, offending feminists, and why everyone’s genitalia is funny to look at.“Genitalia is hilarious,” says Miss Cairo, a 23-year-old...
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The Great British Bake Off: It’s official – Nadiya is this year’s finest...
Over her time in the tent Nadiya’s confidence levels have soared; and she has slowly started to believe in her talent as much as the rest of the British nation. Semi-finals were BBC One’s dish of the...
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XFM revived – and a nation put to bed
Chris Moyles has settled thoroughly into middlebrow white indie, positively tender compared to his days on Radio 1. By day five on the new “cool guitar rock radio station X, FM” (aka Radio Geezer), it...
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Must I unremember the day I wept over the long, slow suicide of a 27-year-old...
At that time we did talk about the occupation of Ireland. Now we have to pretend we didn’t and it’s all the jolly UK and thank you, England for the peace process. The misremembering of history...
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Shock of the new: the books that were ahead of their time
Experimental writing is not always immediately appreciated. As the Goldsmiths Prize for innovative fiction announces its 2015 shortlist, we asked some of our favourite writers which past British or...
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Housing associations are under pressure - but we're doing our best
Housing associations face a fraught future - but this deal is a good one, says David Orr. I read with interest Tom Copley’s piece on the offer that that we at the National Housing Federation are...
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Watch: Jeremy Corbyn's first party political broadcast
In his first broadcast as Labour leader, Corbyn repeated his call for a new type of politics. Photo: Getty Images
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Was there no one to stop Morrissey publishing List of the Lost?
Asking a decent editor to save this book would have been like asking a doctor to help a corpse that had fallen from the top of the Empire State Building. Had Johnny Marr not rung the 23-year-old...
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Sunset views and new dawns at the New Statesman Labour conference party
On the first night of conference, a wide variety of MPs, thinktankers and journalists gathered for the annual NS party. The New Statesman's party has become an institution at Labour conference,...
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Why Jeremy Corbyn will find winning back Scotland so hard
For an ever-greater number on the left, the independence question transcends all others. Jeremy Corbyn has headed to Scotland for his first post-conference visit. It is here that many of Corbyn's...
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Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath: partners in martyrdom
Jonathan Bate’s unauthorised biography confirms that, no matter how energetic his love life, Hughes’s obsession with Plath never faded. Towards the end of his biography of Ted Hughes, Jonathan Bate...
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The NS Podcast #117: Conference Season and Poets' Lives
The NS podcast. This week, we discuss the end of Labour's party conference (and the start of the Conservatives') and a new biography of Ted Hughes. (Helen Lewis, George Eaton, Stephen Bush, Tom Gatti,...
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Zac Goldsmith wins Conservative mayoral nomination
The Richmond MP and anti-Heathrow campaigner will face Sadiq Khan in 2016. Zac Goldsmith has won the Conservative mayoral nomination with 70 per cent of the vote in the first round, setting up a...
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Where do Labour go from here?
Authenticity is Jeremy Corbyn's best asset, but he has to build on it. He will be remembered as the man who published a book accusing David Cameron of doing something unspeakable. But it is Lord...
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A night in my old room, with the sink, the Wisdens, and the prospect of “full...
The mirror is still there, though, into which I would, as Nigel Molesworth put it, gaze at my strange unatural (sic) beauty, and ask what purpose it served. In my old bedroom, again. This is, at...
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