6 h. ago Lanarkshire musician's Makaton choir for people with Down’s syndrome to star at Paisley Book Festival

Choir 21 will perform as conductor and author Katy Lironi shares a book telling her family’s story.

Culture

10 h. ago Underdogs: The Truth About Britain’s White Working Class review – a complicated class portrait

Journalist Joel Budd travels around Britain demolishing Brexit myths in a nuanced study of a social group too often reduced to a cartoon by politiciansOn 13 November 1968, a 35-year-old Labour politician got to his feet in the House of Commons and had a go at the ranks of Conservative members who faced him. Six or so months after Enoch Powell had delivered his infamously racist “rivers of blood” speech in Birmingham, David Winnick – who was then the MP for Croydon South – had decided to attack the Tory fashion for bemoaning immigration to the UK from such countries as India and Pakistan and expressing faux sympathy with deprived communities in British cities. “Many of those who act as the champions of the white person against immigrants,” he said, “have not in the past gone out of their way to defend the interests of the white working class.”As the Economist journalist Joel Budd points out in this nuanced, enlightening book about the people and places Winnick was referring to, this ...

Events

2 d. ago Kaliane Bradley: ‘I dreaded the book going to people I know’

The author of bestseller The Ministry of Time on how lockdown telly, Terry Pratchett and her Cambodian heritage shaped her Arctic time travel taleKaliane Bradley, 36, lives in east London and works as an editor at Penguin Classics. Her debut novel, The Ministry of Time (Sceptre), was published last year to critical acclaim and a place in the bestseller charts and is out in paperback now. It’s a vivid time travel tale following Lieutenant Graham Gore, a crew member of Franklin’s lost 1845 Arctic expedition, who is brought back to life in the 21st century as part of a government experiment. He develops an unlikely relationship with his “bridge”, a contemporary character helping him assimilate to the modern world. It was longlisted for the 2025 women’s prize for fiction and the BBC has commissioned a TV adaptation.What has the past year been like for you?Lovely and discombobulating. I veer wildly between immense gratitude and intense impostor syndrome. But I’m still working 4.5 days a ...

Politics

4 d. ago National campaign to see young people’s poetry published in book

A national poetry campaign aimed at raising vital funds and increasing visibility for Scotland’s LGBTQ+ youth has announced that selected submissions will be published in a new book.

Politics

8 d. ago Brits brand Royal Mail stamp price hikes 'unfair' as cost soars by 76p in five years

The cost has increased eight times since 2020, despite Royal Mail failing to meet any annual delivery targets in the same period. One in three people (33%) say they would now struggle to afford a book of eight first-class stamps

Economics

9 d. ago Tina Turner fans warned by bosses that legend 'won't be in musical' for one major reason

Bosses at the production are worried that people will book tickets and expect to see the star in the show — even though she has been dead for almost three years

Events

1 week ago Ezra Klein on Trump, Vance and free speech: ‘It feels like we are in one of the darkest imaginable timelines’

The influential US commentator has written a book about how politics can change people’s lives for the better. But first, there are more pressing challenges to address ...Ezra Klein, the New York Times podcast host and progressive media’s undisputed nerd king, starts his new book with something of a palate cleanser for our troubled times. For a few paragraphs, he and his co-author, the Atlantic journalist Derek Thompson, whisk us out of the grim reality of contemporary politics to a world of Abundance (the word they picked as their title).“You open your eyes at dawn and turn in the cool bedsheets,” they purr, before conjuring a near-future utopia where the cost of living crisis is a distant memory. “You live in a cocoon of energy so clean it barely leaves a carbon trace and so cheap you can scarcely find it on your monthly bill.” The fridge is full of fresh fruit and vegetables from skyscraper farms that sit amid rewilded landscapes. This is what we can look forward to, they say, if...

Politics

2 w. ago Careless People review: Facebook whistleblower’s book serves up one bombshell after another

Sarah Wynn-Williams’ tell-all memoir is a nightmare for Mark Zuckerberg – and a joy for the rest of us

Events

3 w. ago Maria Shriver admits she turned to 'shamans and psychics' to cope with Arnold Schwarzenegger's humiliating affair

Shriver is now releasing a book of poetry, and an excerpt obtained by People reveals the scope of her pain and her efforts to repair her broken heart after the split.

Events

3 w. ago Meta exposé tops bestseller chart despite company’s attempt to ban its promotion

Sarah Wynn-Williams’s account of her seven years as a Facebook executive is number one on the New York Times bestseller list and has flown off the shelves in the UKAn exposé by a former employee of Meta has become a bestseller despite the social media company banning the author from promoting the book.Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former director of global public policy at Meta’s precursor, Facebook, topped the New York Times bestseller chart and will be fourth on the Sunday Times nonfiction hardback chart this weekend. Continue reading...

Politics