Amis, Hitchens and Larkin: bad behaviour and a messy personal life were once a gift for authors. Not any more
Martha Gill
‘You read to have a good time. Why else would people go on doing it?’: Martin Amis – a life in quotes
June 2022
The Princess review – Diana’s story remains captivating – and agonising
We know what happens but, even so, Ed Perkins’s skilfully edited documentary on the dazzling outsider royal is utterly and unerringly compelling
May 2021
Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020 by Salman Rushdie review - self-absorption writ large
Rushdie is overly drawn to low-hanging fruit in this smug collection of criticism, speeches and essays
June 2020
It has been easier to cope with my cancer during lockdown - and books have been a lifeline
While being treated for a brain tumour, Susie Steiner has read memoirs and medical histories - but it was a novel that best captured the gruelling reality of illness
April 2020
A book that changed me
I can never look at an alsatian without thinking of Martin Amis's London Fields
Rosa Lyster
When my dad introduced me to the novel, he didn’t say what it was about, says the writer Rosa Lyster
February 2020
Martin Amis to publish novel inspired by death of Christopher Hitchens
An autobiographical novel, Inside Story, will chronicle the writer’s romantic affairs, the death of Hitchens – his closest friend – and the 9/11 attacks
November 2019
London Review of Books: An Incomplete History review – 40 years of the LRB
Rants, spats and intellectual seriousness from London’s literary elite
April 2019
The week in radio: Forest 404; The Reunion; Archive on 4 – review
Radio 4’s new sci-fi series was darkly funny but also infuriating. Plus, powerful real-life drama in The Reunion; and remembering Christopher Hitchens
February 2019
Sam Harris, the new atheist with a spiritual side
The neuroscientist – and longtime exponent of meditation – talks about his new app and why he is definitely not an Islamophobe
January 2019
Book of the day
The Four Horsemen review - whatever happened to ‘New Atheism’?
Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris ... were the apostles of atheism as fearless as they thought?
November 2018
Stephen Fry pronounces the death of classical liberalism: ‘We are irrelevant and outdated bystanders’
He wasn’t the only one, as the Festival of Dangerous Ideas contemplated the rapid changes in contemporary politics
September 2017
Book of the week
The Rub of Time by Martin Amis – brilliant, except when it’s not
Martin Amis: ‘I miss the English’
May 2017
Thirty years of Hay: Christopher Hitchens, Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel – in conversation
Christopher Hitchens on God, Margaret Atwood on The Handmaid’s Tale, Hilary Mantel on Wolf Hall … highlights from Hay’s most memorable interviews
February 2017
Notebook
I put Milo Yiannopoulos through the Christopher Hitchens test. He failed
Peter Bradshaw
Bill Maher likened the far-right agitator to one of the finest writers of recent times. He isn’t even close – Yiannopoulos is a boring narcissist
December 2016
Martin Amis working on novel about Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin
Theme of the autobiographical fiction about his three friends, who all died after he had begun writing it, will be death
November 2016
AA Gill opens restaurant review with cancer disclosure
Sunday Times critic wanted to alert readers to any effect of chemotherapy on his taste buds and says he has no ‘bucket list’
June 2016
Deathbed conversion? Never. Christopher Hitchens was defiant to the last
Nick Cohen
There was no deathbed conversion to Christianity, despite the claims of a ‘strange, spiteful book’
May 2016
Christopher Hitchens and the Christian conversion that wasn’t
Matthew d'Ancona
A new book suggesting that the author of God is not Great was halfway to Christianity follows a long tradition of appropriation