EYES ON THE PRIZE

“Wolf Hall”, by Hilary Mantel, didn’t just win the Man Booker prize last year: it became the fastest-selling Booker winner ever. But behind her triumph, as she reveals in this memoir, lay a complicated relationship with awards ... read more »
COMMENTS: 0 |BRUSHES WITH HOCKNEY

Even in his 70s, David Hockney’s enthusiasm is boyish, his work rate ferocious. Being friends with him means going to California and Yorkshire, and forever being shown new work—from remakes of old masters to iPad sketches. Karen Wright tries to keep up ... read more »
COMMENTS: 0 |HOW DID SPORT GET SO BIG?

Once, it was only a game. Now sport is a never-ending drama, a soap opera watched all over the world. Tim de Lisle works out how it happened ... read more »
COMMENTS: 12 |BALLAD OF A SOUTH AFRICAN FOOTBALL FAN

In 35 years South African football has gone from the wilderness to staging the World Cup. Raymond Whitaker remembers life as a white follower of a largely black sport, and returns to Johannesburg to meet his boyhood hero ... read more »
COMMENTS: 6 |COLIN FIRTH: THE MAN IN THE WHITE SHIRT
Colin Firth is outstanding, as he shows in “A Single Man”, for which he has just won a Bafta. So why isn’t he at his best more often? Isabel Lloyd asks him ... read more »
COMMENTS: 8 |THE ARCTIC IS MELTING

While the politicians fiddle, the world keeps warming. The Arctic may be down to its last few summers of being white. Johann Hari, in Greenland, asks hunters and scientists how climate change really feels ... read more »
COMMENTS: 117 |HOW MARKETING HAS GOT UNDER OUR SKIN

Branding used to be for products, then celebrities. Now it is something ordinary people do to themselves. Peter York traces the roots of a phenomenon that goes back to Dale Carnegie via Margaret Thatcher ... read more »
COMMENTS: 3 |THE LAST DAYS OF THE POLYMATH

People who know a lot about a lot have long been an exclusive club, but now they are an endangered species. Edward Carr tracks some down ... read more »
COMMENTS: 40 |OLD FRIENDS: IRVING WARDLE ON HAROLD PINTER

One day in 1958 Irving Wardle received a letter from Harold Pinter. It was the beginning of a bittersweet friendship between a star writer and a leading critic ... read more »
COMMENTS: 6 |FORMATIVE YEARS: NOT BOYS IN DRESSES

In our final instalment of formative years, a series about the experiences of women who entered boys' schools in the 1970s, Tracey Camilleri admits to feeling liberated when let out of an all-female environment ... read more »
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