Life & Society

Lead Feature

Tantalised by the Big G

By Iain Simons

Whilst the sensation of rummaging around in history is wholly intoxicating, the possibilities for a real sense of traveling through it are tantalising...

Also in life & society

Silence of the bees

By Sholto Byrnes

Beekeepers have been struck two such terrible blows over the past 18 months that there may not be any home-produced honey in Britain's shops by Christmas

One long Sats test

By Francis Gilbert

In this emotional indictment of our education system, the writer and teacher Francis Gilbert explains how an obsession with testing has broken enthusiasm for learning

Invisible cities

By Hisham Matar

In myth, Babylon is a place of romance and wonder, but years of dictatorship and war have taken their toll. Hisham Matar on his attempt to visit the ancient metropolis

When greed was still good

By Andrew Billen

Unlike his more didactic work, David Hare's latest play, about the Blair premiership, is a skillful fusion of drama and politics - insightful and entertaining

Singing for their supper

By Antonia Quirke

Two musicians take a road trip across eastern Europe - and the result is madness

Tribes of clutter

By Michael Collins

A new study of contemporary Londoners' possessions and the values they attach to them reveals a shift of allegiance away from wider society and towards the individual household

Modernism à la mode

By Veronica Horwell

The Allure of Chanel
Paul Morand
Pushkin Press,200pp, £12

More This Week

In Europe

Why, oh why, do I love Paris?

By Stephen Glover

Travelling directly by train in two and a half hours from city centre to city centre, you have a feeling of having moved suddenly between two very different worlds