Books
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The books we give as gifts
Forget socks. Leave the Next voucher. Put the Terry’s Chocolate Orange down. If chosen wisely, a book is the very…
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How the horror and trauma of the trenches gave the world its two greatest war poets
All the armies in the First World War had a word for it: the Germans called it Kriegsneurose; the French,…
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John Cooper Clarke, beloved Bard of Salford: ‘If you gave me access to the internet, you’d find me dead in six weeks under pizza boxes’
When the young John Cooper Clarke told his family he was going to be a professional poet, they were aghast.…
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I met Benjamin Zephaniah several times – he was as open and kind-hearted as his poetry
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,” wrote Benjamin Zephaniah in a poem I know he’d be proud to learn…
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I met Benjamin Zephaniah several times – he was as open and kind-hearted as his poetry
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,” wrote Benjamin Zephaniah in a poem I know he’d be proud to learn…
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In Robert Hardman’s biography, Charles III is like a vintage Rolls-Royce being serviced for a Formula One grand prix
For 70-something frustrating years, he was Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor, our longest monarch-in-waiting. About a year ago, according to…
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Nina Stibbe on marriage breakup, dodgy bladders, and starting again at 60
Nina Stibbe’s new book, a memoir titled Went to London, Took the Dog, comes, she says, with a warning for…
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The online hate, conspiracies and misinformation driving a new wave of antisemitism
My grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, never liked talking about antisemitism. But I was an inquisitive grandson, perhaps uncaringly so, and…
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‘I love you. I’m glad I exist’: How The Orange made Wendy Cope the internet’s favourite poet
In Wendy Cope’s poem “The Orange”, she buys herself… a very big orange. One so huge that she laughs at…
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