Stay updated with breaking news from Sam Leith. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
Comedian Dave Chappelle (pictured) is being blasted after making transphobic remarks in his sixth Netflix special, The Closer. Some critics are calling on the streaming service to axe the standup special
During his sixth Netflix special, The Closer, Chappelle, 48, joked about Rowling's argument that transgender women were not actually women and were a threat to her identity.
26 Jul 2021 Britain’s Health Secretary Sajid Javid has apologised for saying that it is time to “learn to live with, rather than cower from” the coronavirus, in a failed attempt to appease pro-lockdown critics. “Please, if you haven’t yet, get your jab, as we learn to live with, rather than cower from, this virus,” Javid had said in a now-deleted social media post announcing he was recovered from his own coronavirus infection. Predictably, the Health Secretary soon found himself accosted by lockdown enthusiasts already upset by the government having relaxed restrictions on people...
Bashed out in just 35 days on a knackered old typewriter sporting a bullet hole from his days as a war reporter, Frederick Forsyth’s The Day Of The Jackal — 50 years old this month — changed thriller writing for ever. It didn’t matter that everyone knew the ending before they read it; set in the early 1960s, the plot revolves around a professional assassin’s attempt to kill Charles de Gaulle. But the former French president had died at home several months earlier in November 1970. Nor did it matter that Forsyth’s first novel reads more like a documentary than fiction. Or that it b...
The best (and worst) novels of 2021 so far In this regularly updated guide, our critics review the best of the year's fiction – and suggest a few books to avoid Eight of the best: this year's top novels The Start-Up Wife by Tahmima Anam ★★★☆☆ Tahmima Anam is best known as the award-winning writer of three novels (A Golden Age, The Good Muslim and The Bones of Grace), and less well-known as the executive director of a music technology startup called ROLI. An experience no doubt plumbed for her latest book, The Startup Wife, a tech industry-set reverse romcom in which a young Bangl...