How can ancient history help us to understand our modern world? Watch @wmarybeard.bsky.social in conversation with @tanjilrashid.bsky.social for @newstatesman1913.bsky.social. Mary's latest book #TalkingClassics is out now!

The British Jews of Golders Green – whose grandparents sought sanctuary in Britain from the Nazis, whose parents sought sanctuary in suburbia further up the Northern Line – no longer seem to find sanctuary in mainstream British political life.

I wrote about Golders Green. And Kenton. And Finchley. And Hendon. Are you getting the picture yet? Because if not, I can draw you a map. www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...

"If the Islamic Republic falls, its ideology will not fall with it – as Marxism did with the Berlin Wall – into history’s trash heap" Very good column by my colleague @tanjilrashid.bsky.social: www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2026/0...

My column this week on voters beginning to view class in the "present tense", while politicians are stuck on Corrie and curtains:

My column on the afterlife of churches in this week's @newstatesman1913.bsky.social:

Does reading make you a better person? My conversation with historian Dominic Sandbrook -- fresh from launching The Book Club -- is now available to listen in full on the @newstatesman1913.bsky.social's New Society podcast podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/d... www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki8z...

Thanks to @tanjilrashid.bsky.social for inviting me on to the @newstatesman1913.bsky.social’s excellent new culture podcast to revisit one of the first pieces I ever wrote for the magazine and to talk about David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest at 30 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Revealing analysis by @willoyd.bsky.social of the thinking behind Jenrick's sacking:

First episode of our brand new culture podcast, The New Society, is out! The brilliant @tanjilrashid.bsky.social interviewing Salman Rushdie. Subscribe!

TS Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” has never stopped terrifying us

It began with a name. The name was disembodied from its owner, a shadow devoid of a source. “Rushdie”. 📕 Culture editor Tanjil Rashid: In the autumn of Salman Rushdie

Remember integration? That thing voters "really, really" care about? Where's that in the latest plans? My column:

"There are authentic shivers of the 1970s, now buried deep in the British nervous system" Really enjoyed this on Fawlty Towers by @nickpaulharris.bsky.social:

Exclusive: Racially and religiously aggravated crimes have risen *67%* on transport networks in England, Scotland and Wales since 2022 - I also found there was a *47%* rise between 2022 and 2024, and a *10%* rise from last year to the same period this year:

'With any art form, if ABC is expected from it, how can it surprise, challenge, develop cultures, reflect and revolutionise the way we see the world?' Sarah Hall talks to @tanjilrashid.bsky.social @newstatesman1913.bsky.social about her remarkable novel, Helm. www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

"It might be entertaining, but it won’t make you think, and it won’t make you feel" My review of The Bacchae at the National Theatre - a production based on the premise the audience won’t notice how little sense it makes as long as the cast say fuck enough www.newstatesman.com/culture/thea...

Striking piece, essential read 👇

Robert Redford, who has died at 89, was the last simple beauty. 🍿 David Thomson

Brilliant piece by my colleague @anooshc.bsky.social glimpsing fascinatingly into the worldview of what will be an increasingly influential current within parliaments of the future

“There is a risk of polarising every landlord as ‘evil’ - we must make sure we don’t fall into that trap.” Lumped together as "Gaza Independents", the 4 independent MPs working with Corbyn & Sultana are more varied than that - as I found out from Shockat Adam: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

We are entering an age of deportation - my @newstatesman.com cover story on how mass expulsions will transform what it means to be British, via Kipling, Enoch Powell, Hanif Kureishi...and a heroic vigilante cycle repairist from Eritrea www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

"I, too, would not be possible, would not be English, without those old histories, which the right now seeks to bury beneath the footsteps of deported masses." @tanjilrashid.bsky.social writes beautifully on the age of deportation in this week's @newstatesman.com cover story:

Read @tanjilrashid.bsky.social's piece. Dehumanisation happens so fast. This notion that all our very serious problems can be solved by pushing a good 2% (do I hear 10?) of our communities off our white cliffs is insanely stupid & vengeful. www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

'If you're experimenting with things, you're always writing against the culture' Goldsmiths Prize 2017 winner Nicola Barker talks to @tanjilrashid.bsky.social about piecing the novel back together again after H(A)PPY, and much else . . . podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a...

A year on from the summer riots, my latest @newstatesman.com column muses on the nature of political violence and how to keep it from consuming our streets, via Gandhi, MLK, Malcolm X and that most underrated of social theorists, director Spike Lee. newstatesman.com/politics/uk-po…

This is a great piece by @tanjilrashid.bsky.social, @newstatesman.com's new Culture Editor. Let's hope he commissions himself as often as possible. www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...

7/7 was twenty years ago today. In my column for the @newstatesman.com, I reflect on how the London bombings reshaped British cultural life and brought 'the Muslim' to the centre of its discourse. www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...

This is a wonderful analysis by @tanjilrashid.bsky.social: "The Phoenician Scheme may at once be Anderson’s worst and most profound film, a beautifully textured engagement with the past, and an almost morally repugnant retreat from the present." Exactly!!! www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ju...

Time to inform you that I've been appointed Culture Editor at The @newstatesman.com - a magazine that has been essential reading for over a century. Looking forward to hearing from and getting to know the very best critics, essayists and commentators on books, ideas & the arts!

The Phoenician Scheme reimagines the war-ravaged near east as a sunlit Levantine fantasia of cypress trees, fez hats, camel-riders and kitsch hotels. My @theguardian.com column on watching Wes Anderson's nostalgic colonial visions amid the devastation of Gaza. www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ju...

Has Christianity regained the underground appeal of its earliest days? My essay in the @financialtimes.com at the weekend explored the revival of a highly personalised spirituality, notably among Gen-Z, and what some recent writing may reveal about the phenomenon. www.ft.com/content/9446...

EP Thompson argued, "Class is a cultural as much as an economic formation." Worryingly, Britan's white working class are now recognising race *as* their culture. My @newstatesman.com essay responding to @joelbudd.bsky.social's new book on the white working class www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

3 EU citizens with the right to live in Germany are being deported for their role in Gaza protests. They weren't convicted of any crime or even given the chance to be heard in court. The politicians insisted, against opposition from officials; that was that. No German paper has yet even reported it.

For The @newstatesman.com, I wrote about the greatest modern Italian novel (newly adapted by Netflix): The Leopard, but the essay is also about living in a time of change, where novels come from, and how to be the last of one's kind www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

Roland Barthes magical on the way chopsticks "never violate the foodstuff", unlike the "predatory" knife and fork. This is from his book of reflections mostly on Japan, Empire of Signs.

I've been covering the Berlin film festival, which happened alongside a federal election. Here were Germany's two parallel universes, one open and cosmopolitan, the other seeking to close itself off. My @newstatesman.com diary dispatched from Berlin: www.newstatesman.com/culture/film...

For @thespectator1828.bsky.social I looked at the modernist painters of Brazil and their unique postcolonial vision of culture that did not distinguish between the foreign and the native. www.spectator.co.uk/article/was-...

Thomas Mann and the European disease of nihilism The vicious battle of ideas behind the continent's World Wars has migrated East. @tanjilrashid.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2024/1...

It has been said The Magic Mountain--published 100 years ago--is a "summing up of the European soul and mind”; we must realise this encompasses, no less, Europe’s anxious encounter with Asia. My @newstatesman.com essay on Thomas Mann's East-West dialogue: www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2024/1...

To introduce myself to my new followers on this platform, I am posting some of my past writings. Is Europe being Islamised, or is Islam being Europeanised? I argued it's the latter in my essay for @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/09f5...

William Morris's designs are said to reflect a 'very British take on pattern'. But how British were they really? I wrote about the Victorian designer's Islamic inspirations for The Spectator www.spectator.co.uk/article/will...

It may be a good time to read László Krasznahorkai, whose central preoccupation is the decomposition of the body politic. In today's Guardian, I write about why the great Hungarian modernist's cryptic, cosmic visions no longer keep me awake at night. www.theguardian.com/books/2024/n...

'The decomposition of the body politic may be his central preoccupation, and all his novels are imbued with a premonition of the end of things....' @tanjilrashid.bsky.social on the Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai www.theguardian.com/books/2024/n...

William Dalrymple's latest book gets a rave review from @tanjilrashid.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/e746...

I've had the Sailor song from Thief of Bagdad (1940) mysteriously in my head since I was a kid, but I'd never seen the film until today. What I didn't know was that the song was penned by Robert Vansittart, at the time--that time being World War II--the UK's chief diplomat youtu.be/JDLtoFGnwpo?...