The Bloody Crossroads

In 2013 the comedian Russell Brand guest-edited an issue of the New Statesman magazine and declared in his editorial that he had never voted in a general election. An interviewer on the BBC’s Newsnight wanted to know why, and also, given the comedian’s apathy, why anyone should care what he had to say. As he put it, rather more pointedly, […]

Confessing one’s ignorance is not, perhaps, the ideal way to begin an article, but the recent debate about whether or not Grand Theft Auto V is misogynistic is not one to which I’m able to contribute. The last video games I played regularly were Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner, and, frankly, I was terrible at them. (I do occasionally […]

There is a scene in George Eliot’s Middlemarch in which a retired school mistress, Mrs Garth, is attempting to drill her son, Ben Garth, in the finer points of English Grammar. Master Ben is proving a reluctant student. ‘I hate grammar’ he declares; ‘What’s the use of it?’ His mother, however, is in no doubt as to its value; for […]