4 d. ago Desperate search for missing schoolgirl, 12, who vanished from city two days ago

COPS have launched an urgent hunt for a missing 12-year-old who vanished two days ago. Concerns have been growing for Olivia, who disappeared from Mackworth, Derbyshire, on Sunday afternoon. The 12-year-old was last seen in the area at around 5.45pm. Olivia is 5ft 3ins tall, of a slim build with plum coloured shoulder length hair....

Events

8 d. ago The best literary fiction out now: The Silver Book by Olivia Laing, One Aladdin, Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson, Archipelago of the Sun by Yoko Tawada

Claire Allfree reviews the best literary fiction out now

Politics

2 w. ago Heartbroken mum of tragic Olivia, 11, speaks of her pain after suspected ‘drugs death’

THE heartbroken mum of a schoolgirl who died in a suspected drug death has told her how her “laughter and kindness will always be remembered” Tragic Olivia Curley passed away on Monday after taking suddenly unwell on Friday, November 14. She was just 11-years-old. Speaking after the senseless tragedy, her distraught mum Samantha paid emotional...

Events

3 w. ago The Silver Book by Olivia Laing review – a thin line of beauty

The world of 1970s Italian cinema is the glossy backdrop for an elegantly wrought but shallow novel“Ugliness,” noted Pier Paolo Pasolini, “is never completely depressing or repulsive. It contains within it an allegory of hunger and pain, its history is our history, the history of Fascism It is tragic, but immediate, and for this reason, full of life.” For Pasolini, ugliness was its own kind of truth, such that Rome could lay no claim to being the most beautiful city in the world “if it were not, at the same time, the ugliest”. For some, though, that truth risked becoming “unseeable”. The gaze of the touristic voyeur, said Pasolini, skimmed over slums for the poor “filled with illness, violence, crime, and prostitution”, “convinced of the extraneousness and untimeliness of this sub-proletarian, underdeveloped world”.Olivia Laing’s second novel, The Silver Book, is a work preoccupied with beauty. Set in the world of Italian cinema in 1974, the book o...

Politics

3 w. ago Nostalgic Disney show that fans are 'forever obsessed' with is ready to watch

An "extraordinary show" that launched singer Olivia Rodrigo's career is now available to stream for free.

Technology

4 w. ago Olivia Laing on writing their second novel The Silver Book: ‘It was one of those eerie experiences that happens once in a lifetime’

Few living writers have had as impressive a career in non-fiction as this British author – but now they’re leaving it all behind. Laing speaks to Hannah Ewens about turning to fiction, creativity and their political queer romance novel, The Silver Book

Culture