#douglas-murray

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Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 days ago

Does anyone think Matt Goodwin's book on Britain's demise is a publishing sensation? I mean, other than him | Marina Hyde

Liz Truss's book quickly sold out but fell to No 223 in sales, while Matt Goodwin's book faced controversy over AI assistance and publicity tactics.
SF LGBT
fromLGBTQ Nation
3 days ago

John Lithgow claims JK Rowling's anti-trans activism as been "twisted & misrepresented" - LGBTQ Nation

John Lithgow defends his decision to play Dumbledore despite disagreeing with JK Rowling's views on trans identity.
Writing
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 week ago

Enough Said by Alan Bennett review a man for all seasons

Repetition in Alan Bennett's diaries reveals layered meanings, especially regarding his reflections on the pandemic and personal experiences.
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 weeks ago

The Guardian view on the legacy of Jurgen Habermas: philosophical sustenance for illiberal times | Editorial

The Theory of Communicative Action, his 1980s magnum opus, was not (to put it mildly) as accessible as some of his newspaper opinion pieces. But its central idea—that our nature as linguistic beings puts reason and the search for consensus at the core of who we are—remains an antidote both to intellectual relativism and Trumpian realism, which elevates national or individual self-interest above all other sources of human motivation.
Philosophy
UK politics
fromwww.independent.co.uk
1 week ago

Reform politician Matt Goodwin forced to defend new book after using AI

The Independent focuses on critical issues like reproductive rights and climate change, emphasizing the importance of accessible journalism funded by donations.
#free-speech
Books
fromThe Atlantic
2 weeks ago

Salman Rushdie Doesn't Want to Be Your 'Free Speech Barbie'

Salman Rushdie, who survived a 1989 fatwa and a 2022 attack, seeks recognition as a working writer rather than a symbol of free speech, frustrated that his 23 books are overshadowed by threats to his life.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
2 weeks ago

Salman Rushdie Doesn't Want to Be Your 'Free Speech Barbie'

Salman Rushdie, who survived a 1989 fatwa and a 2022 attack, seeks recognition as a working writer rather than a symbol of free speech, frustrated that his 23 books are overshadowed by threats to his life.
#nigel-farage
UK politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 weeks ago

Farage called Welsh people foreign speakers' in paid-for video message

Nigel Farage made controversial remarks describing Welsh people as foreign speakers in a paid Cameo video, potentially damaging Reform UK's Welsh election campaign.
UK politics
fromwww.bbc.com
2 weeks ago

Nigel Farage criticised for calling Welsh people 'foreign speakers'

Nigel Farage faced criticism from Welsh political parties for describing Welsh people as 'foreign speakers' in a paid Cameo video message ahead of Wales' Senedd election.
fromwww.mediaite.com
4 weeks ago

Jerry Springer of Political Television': Ben Shapiro Slams Piers Morgan For Hosting America Haters' Like Dave Smith

Piers Morgan, who has sort of made a mockery of the entire industry by putting on screen whatever dregs are still willing to go on [his show]... He had on Dave Smith, who has, you know, apparently, his job is to never tell jokes but to instead, give poorly-informed foreign policy takes... And to also hate America.
Right-wing politics
Media industry
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Baftas host Alan Cumming criticises BBC for broadcasting slurs and censoring free speech'

The BBC failed to edit out a racial slur from the Baftas telecast despite having time to do so, while removing other controversial moments, causing widespread criticism from Alan Cumming and others.
London politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Dining across the divide: Saying everyone who wants to reduce illegal migration is racist doesn't get us very far'

A retired local government manager and audio producer with different immigration perspectives share dinner, discussing fairness in migration policy and British values around queue-jumping.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
4 weeks ago

Tales of the Suburbs by John Grindrod review an entertaining alternative history of queer Britain

John Grindrod's alternative history chronicles queer life in British suburbs and small towns, departing from typical urban-centered narratives to reveal how LGBTQ+ people navigated identity and community in non-metropolitan areas.
US politics
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

When Caring Becomes Counterculture

Trump's tariff policies reflect his desire for unchecked presidential power rather than sound economic strategy, and his Supreme Court defeat reveals deeper concerns about executive authority than trade policy.
UK politics
fromwww.independent.co.uk
4 weeks ago

Reform accused of return to age-old racism' after by-election candidate's comments

Health Secretary Wes Streeting accuses Reform UK candidate Matt Goodwin of promoting racism by questioning whether UK-born people from immigrant backgrounds are truly British.
US politics
fromwww.mediaite.com
1 month ago

Mehdi Hasan Accuses Piers Morgan to His Face of Running Cover' For Trump

Mehdi Hasan defended Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Taiwan remarks, accused Piers Morgan of defending Donald Trump, and argued Trump’s comments were far more incoherent.
fromwww.standard.co.uk
1 month ago

Little Britain's Matt Lucas targeted by pro-Palestinian activist on London Underground

In a now-deleted video, the 51-year old Little Britain star was filmed and followed by Thomas Abdullah Bourne on the escalator of a London Tube station. Mr Abdullah Bourne, known on social media as White British Muslim, was heard shouting Free Palestine. Free Palestine, Matt Lucas. After initially attempting to hide his face, Lucas calmly acknowledges his pursuer at the top of the escalator and asks: Hi, how are you?
London
UK politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Behind the Guardian's analysis of 100 years of MPs' language on immigration

Parliamentary sentiment toward immigration has shifted significantly rightward over the past five years, measured through a custom machine learning model analyzing House of Commons debates.
Arts
fromwww.npr.org
2 months ago

Julian Barnes' playful new book is also his 'official departure'

An aging writer confronts mortality, memory, and repetition while considering retirement and revisiting past relationships through fiction blending autobiography and invention.
UK politics
fromwww.bbc.com
1 month ago

MPs openly criticising Andrew reflects shift in tradition

MPs openly criticized Prince Andrew in Parliament, demanding document release regarding his trade envoy appointment and alleged connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Tim Dowling: I've already used up all my optimism for the year. What now?

I am sitting in my office shed, cut off from the house by a driving rain. The misery and boredom of the English winter is, I have to admit, beginning to get to me. I spent January talking about the days getting longer, and used up all my optimism. For the last 10 minutes I've been scrolling through the website of my American home town newspaper, which is full of pictures of the recent snowfall over a foot, with more predicted in the coming days. Extreme weather has a tendency to make me homesick I hate to miss a hurricane.
UK news
Film
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

My cultural awakening: Thirteen influenced my hedonistic youth, until a psychotic episode ended it'

A 13-year-old experienced a sudden shift into self-destructive rebellious behavior influenced by peers and the film Thirteen, seeking acceptance and identity.
fromDefector
2 months ago

Bari Weiss Is The Symptom | Defector

"My general view here," the CBS News editor-in-chief wrote in a memo before shelving the now-infamous 60 Minutes report on El Salvador's CECOT concentration camp, "is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story. In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here." Expediency, personal prerogative, servility to power, all smuggled under the cover of journalistic scruple:
Media industry
Media industry
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

What Bari Weiss Wants

Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press, was appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News by David Ellison, surprising observers and promising institutional changes.
fromenglish.elpais.com
1 month ago

Julian Barnes: I've become more left-wing because the center has moved rightwards'

As he did in his masterful Flaubert's Parrot, the British author returns in this new work to a hybrid style that blends fiction and nonfiction, imagination and erudition. And once again he plays with the traps of the past and memory, as he did in The Sense of an Ending, which won the Booker Prize in 2011. In Departures, a couple, Stephen and Jean, attempt without much success to rekindle their idealized university romance half a century later.
Books
fromwww.independent.co.uk
2 months ago

Steve Coogan says Reform UK threaten human rights in stark political message

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
US politics
US politics
fromIndependent
2 months ago

Colin Murphy: Is America now a fascist state? Here are the people who beg to differ

Many outside liberal urban centers see anger over ICE as legitimate but believe city-based commentators exaggerate and amplify fears of authoritarianism.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Beyond Trainspotting: The World of Irvine Welsh review uniquely funny writer holds court

The extended footage of Welsh in conversation is certainly engaging, as he discusses his writing and the movies it created, and his own youth in Edinburgh. Some of the rest of the interviewees aren't quite so gripping, however, and the film is padded out with a fair bit of redundant anecdotage from people on the subject of getting hilariously wasted in Irvine's company or at least his approximate vicinity.
Books
US politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Along comes Trump and our emperors have no clothes | John Crace

Political leaders often present an illusion of control, but Trump's unpredictable behavior exposes their limitations and creates widespread uncertainty.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Scandalous and unacceptable': readers on the new UK entry rules for dual nationals

British dual nationals living abroad have told of their disgust, fury and distress over new UK border rules that mean they could risk be denied boarding on a flight, ferry or train. The new rules, which come into force on 25 February, have caught many by surprise and require British dual nationals to present a British passport or a certificate of entitlement, which costs 589, to visit the UK on their non-British passport.
UK politics
#lionel-shriver
UK politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Farage's attack on Turkish barber shops is dog-whistle racism, minister says

Nigel Farage's targeting of Turkish barber shops is dog-whistle racism and offers no credible plan to address long-term high street decline.
UK politics
fromwww.standard.co.uk
2 months ago

Sadiq Khan slams critics 'painting dystopian picture of London as fallen city' as he defends immigration

Sir Sadiq Khan accuses right-wing parties of stoking fear and misrepresenting London because they oppose its diversity, progressivism, and a Muslim mayor.
fromThe US Sun
1 month ago

Farage will END working from home as he blasts 'it's a load of nonsense!'

"You can't go on the sick because you've got mild anxiety. But it is an attitudinal change that Britain needs. "An attitudinal change to hard work, rather than work-life balance. "An attitudinal change to the idea of working from home. "People aren't more productive working at home - it's a load of nonsense. "They're more productive being with other fellow human beings and working as part of a team."
UK politics
#immigration
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Pubs are for everyone. Don't let Reform make them the political property of the boorish hard right | Jonathan Liew

The pint is served roughly. It spills as it lands on the bar, sending a little eddy of suds down the glass, into the lattice of branded rubber matting, a place where neither scrubbing brushes nor a desperate human tongue can penetrate. Typical. My 5p Reform windfall, gone in the clumsy flick of a wrist. I guard the pint carefully as I weave a perilous path to my table, quietly satisfied at pushing another struggling family closer to penury.
UK politics
UK politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

I'm British, English and British Asian', says Rishi Sunak in riposte to racially charged debate over identity

Rishi Sunak affirmed his British, English, and British Asian identity and warned that racially charged rhetoric from right-wing figures threatens social cohesion.
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

In 2026, remember this: Britain is much better than it was in so many ways. Don't swallow the right's lies | John Harris

A couple of the more disruptive boys in the class put red laces in their Dr Martens, because someone had told them that was how you showed your support for the National Front. Jew was an everyday insult and the N-word was in regular circulation. There were no more than four or five non-white kids in the whole school: I can recall one Asian girl finding her art folder had been covered in racist abuse,
UK politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Rory Stewart: A superpower? Indifference to social media abuse'

He was secretary of state for international development when he launched an unsuccessful bid to become Tory leader in 2019. Later that year, he resigned from the party to stand as an independent in the London mayoral elections. He co-hosts the podcast The Rest Is Politics and is the author of prize-winning and bestselling books including The Places in Between and Politics on the Edge. His latest is Middleland.
UK politics
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