Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

A lecture explaining why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens. It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking […]

Watch Hulu’s Super Bowl spot for original series The Handmaids Tale

Hulu just released a trailer for its adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a science fiction tale in which the U.S. Government has been toppled by a theocratic authoritarian dictatorship and women suffer a horrible revocation of rights. So yeah it’s a little too on the nose right now. Maybe the hope is that […]

Paul Beatty: For me, Trumps America has always existed

Booker prize winner says presidents rise is not a shock and race relations have improved very little, even under Obama. When Donald Trump was being inaugurated, Paul Beatty was lying in bed with his wife, groggy with medication halfway around the world, in Jaipur, India. His book, The Sellout, a sarcastic, complex novel on race […]

Jonathan Raban: I felt pretty happy that I was still alive

The author on his recovery after a stroke and his fears for a dis-United States. On 11 June 2011, a few days before his 69th birthday, Jonathan Raban was sitting with his daughter Julia at home in Seattle. He’d felt foggy and out of sorts since waking. Having reheated a casserole, he looked down to […]

Stephen King attacks Bob Dylan’s Nobel prize knockers

Guitar-playing horror legend speaks out against literary authors such as Gary Shteyngart and Irvine Welsh who have scorned the singer’s award. Stephen King has come to the defence of Bob Dylan’s Nobel prize for literature, accusing those who oppose the award of sour grapes. According to King, no other musician has had such an impact […]