54 h. ago The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood audiobook review – a puzzle waiting to be decoded

Romance, sci-fi and family drama are thrillingly combined in this Booker-winning novel, shared between three narratorsIt’s 25 years since the publication of The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood’s intricately plotted, multi-narrative novel which led to her first Booker prize win. Blending romance, pulpy sci-fi and family drama, it opens with octogenarian Iris Chase Griffen recalling the moment she was told her sister, Laura, had driven off a bridge. The police inform her that two people witnessed Laura deliberately swerve off the road. Though Iris believes this to be true, she insists to the officers that it was an accident.We go on to hear about Iris’s privileged upbringing and marriage of convenience to Richard Griffen, the wealthy owner of a button factory, and her estrangement from her granddaughter with whom she hopes to reconcile. The book also contains excerpts from Laura’s posthumously published novel which features clandestine romantic encounters between an unnamed man – seem...

Politics

62 h. ago Tom Hanks film named one of the greatest ever is free to watch on TV tonight

This modern classic is in most people's top five

Culture

6 d. ago Classic car enthusiast spent £13,000 restoring a 1958 Wolseley 1500 and kept every receipt

Meet the classic car enthusiast who claims his 68-year-old classic car is more reliable than many modern vehicles - and has kept every receipt involved in restoring the 1958 Wolesley 1500.

Economics

9 d. ago Hark by Alice Vincent audiobook review – a search for silence

A former music journalist’s exploration of how we listen is informed by her life-changing experience of motherhoodWhen did you last experience total silence? In Hark, the author Alice Vincent goes to extreme lengths to eradicate noise as she spends time in an anechoic chamber, a heavily soundproofed space designed to swallow up sound waves. There she becomes aware of the noises of her own body, from involuntary swallowing to the soft, high-pitched ringing in her ears. But rather than feel unease, she is “confronted with a comfort I couldn’t have imagined – and a familiarity with quietude I didn’t realise I was living in”.Hark is a book about listening, being heard and the author’s shifting relationship with sound in the early years of motherhood. While working as a music journalist in her 20s, Vincent had been surrounded by noise. But now, in her 30s and plunged into domesticity, she finds herself craving quiet. She also examines how others experience sound, investiga...

Politics

1 week ago ‘Modern horror classic’ finally available to stream days before sequel’s released

It’s the perfect time for a re-watch – if you can hack it

Sport

2 w. ago Israel’s stated aim is the destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons – but the real goal is regime change in Tehran

Israel’s real aim in Iran is regime change - and that suits the West just fine, writes World Affairs Editor Sam Kiley

Events

2 w. ago Netflix fans can rediscover Yellowstone creator's 'modern day classic' nominated for multiple Oscars

It gained a near perfect Rotten Tomatoes score

Politics

2 w. ago Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan audiobook review – love and conflict in Sri Lanka

The civil war transforms a young trainee doctor’s life as she copes with her feelings for a Tamil Tiger in last year’s Women’s prizewinning novelBrotherless Night opens with 16-year-old Sashi Kulenthiren, who hopes to be a doctor like her eldest brother, making tea when the kettle slips out of her hand, causing her to pour boiling water on herself. When a neighbour, K, hears her screams, he rushes over to help, cracking raw eggs over the scalds to soothe the pain. “So I began as K’s patient though he ended as mine,” Sashi reflects.Set in 1980s Sri Lanka, VV Ganeshananthan’s coming-of-age novel – which won the 2024 Women’s prize for fiction – is an epic and hard-hitting tale of family and survival as it documents life during the civil war between Tamil separatists and the Sinhalese majority that lasted three decades. Before fighting breaks out, Sashi’s most pressing problem is whether she will pass her exams at school. But soon violence and kidnapping become the norm, communities are...

Events

2 w. ago 'Sam Allardyce wanted to kick my door down': IAN LADYMAN tells Mark Clattenburg about extraordinary run

The Mail's Football Editor revealed he had a tense phone call with 'Big' Sam Allardyce during the former Bolton, Newcastle and West Ham boss's early days at Notts County in the late nineties.

Politics

3 w. ago Brighton Rock by Graham Greene audiobook review – Sam West captures the menace of this modern classic

The seaside town’s seedy underbelly is vividly evoked in this timeless tale of murder, romance and revengeWe are not short of audio versions of Brighton Rock, Graham Greene’s classic thriller from 1938 set in the eponymous seaside town. Past narrators have included Jacob Fortune‑Lloyd, Richard Brown and Tom O’Bedlam, and that’s before you get to the various radio dramatisations. But few can match this narration from the Howards End actor Samuel West, first recorded in 2011, which captures the menace and seediness that runs through Greene’s novel.It tells of 17-year-old Pinkie Brown, a razor-wielding hoodlum who is trying to cover up the murder of a journalist, Charles “Fred” Hale, killed by his gang in revenge for a story he wrote on Pinkie’s now deceased boss, Kite. Pinkie sets about wooing Rose, a naive young waitress who unwittingly saw something that could implicate him in the murder. His plan is to marry her to prevent her testifying against him. But he...

Politics

3 w. ago EFL stadium left abandoned still features sign showing how cheap football used to be

As some football fans continue to get tired of new and modern stadiums, one classic ground that used to be in the EFL has started being used again, having previously been abandoned

Culture

last month Sonny Boy by Al Pacino audiobook review – from the South Bronx to Hollywood

The actor warmly narrates this intimate account of his rise to stardom, from the traumas that shaped his childhood to the epiphany that would lead to his glittering careerThe title of Al Pacino’s memoir comes from the nickname given to him by his mother when he was growing up. His parents divorced when he was two, after which he and his mother moved in with his grandparents in the South Bronx, where violence and drugs were rife. One day, six-year-old Pacino was playing outside with his friends when he saw an ambulance pull up outside his grandparents’ tenement. He ran towards the building “and there, coming out of the front doors, carried on a stretcher, was my mother. She had attempted suicide.”Pacino, now 85, is our gravel-voiced narrator and his performance here is wonderful: warm, fitfully jovial and more intimate than you might expect from an actor who has spent much of his life keeping the public at arm’s length. As well as detailing early traumas – Pacino’s mother died when h...

Culture