Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One app.

Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles. One news app.

HISTORICAL FACTS: 2 - Caught on Camera

Saturday Night Live has thrived in the US for 50 years – but a British SNL faces an uphill battle

A tall, well-built man saunters past a band and onto the stage. He is handsome and slick, the parody of an American talk show host. Magnanimously he interviews the band, only to cut off one guitarist, patronise another and upstage the saxophonist with a mimed solo. And so, Swedish actor…

The Conversation

Why Friday the 13th was bad luck for the Knights Templar and their legacy

In Ridley Scott’s 2005 epic Kingdom of Heaven, The Knights Templar are portrayed as violent extremists. The film is about a crusader, Balian of Ibelin, who is fighting to defend the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem from the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, Saladin.

The Conversation

Women Without Men: a novella that tells the history of Iran through women’s bodies

Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur is an innovative feminist story set in Iran. The story follows five women and the circumstances that make them leave their lives to start anew in a garden on the outskirts of Tehran.

The Conversation

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

The story of the first telephone call – nine words that changed the world

“Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.” Hardly momentous words, but their implications were enormous.

The Conversation

How to spot the use and abuse of the word ‘context’

Everyone’s been in a debate when someone says: “You’re taking that out of context.” But what does it actually mean to understand something “in context”?

The Conversation

Want to understand Honoré de Balzac? Try Dungeons & Dragons instead of literary theory

Most people think originality comes from endless freedom. The role playing game Dungeons Dragons suggests the opposite. It gives players a small number of races, classes and backgrounds and somehow produces characters that feel endlessly distinct. A half-elf paladin might be an immediately recognisable type, yet no two half-elf paladins…

The Conversation

Extra/Ordinary Women exhibition explores the women in Charles Dickens’s life and writing

Walking through the doors of London’s Charles Dickens Museum is always a special moment. This handsome, tall London townhouse – middle class by Victorian standards but practically palatial to visitors today – was the crucible in which a young, ascending Charles Dickens wrote himself into international superstardom.

The Conversation

Read news from The Economist, FT, and more,
with one subscription

What should Keir Starmer do about Wes Streeting? A leadership expert on how to handle rivals in your team

Having survived what looked a lot like a coup attempt, Prime Minister Keir Starmer now needs to decide how to move forward. One of the biggest problems in the immediate term is what to do with his health secretary, Wes Streeting.

The Conversation

Winter sports scream glamour, but women’s ski-wear falls short when it comes to actually skiing

Marks and Spencer is one of the latest UK high-street brands to launch a ski-wear collection. Even supermarket Lidl are in on the action, with their ski range starting from £3.99. This follows earlier moves by fast-fashion retailers such as Topshop who launched SNO in the mid 2010’s and Zara’s…

The Conversation

As Spotify Launches Book Sales, Should You Buy, Sell, or Hold SPOT Stock?

Spotify has announced its entry into the physical books market through a partnership with Bookshop.org.

Barchart

I'll never stop reading with Spotify, Bookshop's partnership and 'Page Match' on Android

Spotify announced a Bookshop.org partnership and a new audiobook feature that syncs with physical versions called "Page Match."

Android Central

George Orwell called for a new way of thinking about science

In October 1945, George Orwell responded to a letter from Mr J. Stewart Cook in the leftwing weekly newspaper Tribune calling for more science education.

The Conversation

Is Spotify the new Amazon? The platform now lets you buy physical books from the app – and its new Page Match tool lets you sync your audio books with the printed version

Spotify's new audiobook upgrades allow you to purchase physical books from the app and more, and it's now in competition with Amazon.

TechRadar

Rediscovered photograph sheds light on Jeanne Duval – Manet’s Lady with a Fan

In May 2025, I came across an extraordinary photograph on the English Wikipedia site devoted to Jeanne Duval. Duval was the supposedly un-photographed Haiti-born long-term mistress and muse of the French poet Charles Baudelaire.

The Conversation

Get all your
news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One news app.

The Conversation

Medieval women used falconry to subvert gender norms

Hawks are taking cinematic flight. In two recent literary adaptations, they are entwined with the lives and emotions of their respective protagonists – Agnes Shakespeare (née Hathaway) and Helen Macdonald.

The Conversation

Rethinking Troy: how years of careful peace, not epic war, shaped this bronze age city

Imagine a city that thrived for thousands of years, its streets alive with workshops, markets and the laughter of children, yet that is remembered for a single night of fire. That city is Troy.

The Conversation

Ali Smith’s Glyph is an exhilarating and excoriating follow-up to Gliff

Ali Smith’s Glyph is the companion novel to her earlier novel, Gliff (2024). Gliff was set in a surreal near-future dystopia. Glyph, meanwhile, is set in the present. But like Smith’s earlier Seasonal Quartet, it offers the reader an uncanny version of our world, haunted by ghostly voices from the…

The Conversation

Identifying dinosaurs from their footprints is difficult – but AI can help

When you hear the word “dinosaur”, the first thing that might spring to mind is a hulking skeleton like Sue the T rex in Chicago’s Field Museum or Sophie the Stegosaurus at the Natural History Museum in London. Dinosaur skeletons give us striking evidence of what these ancient animals looked…

Get all your
news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One news app.

The Conversation

On Being Ill at 100: Virginia Woolf’s ‘best essay’ still shapes how we read sickness

The year is 1926. Queen Elizabeth II is christened. Wage cuts and increased working hours for coal miners precipitate a general strike of workers. A.A. Milne publishes Winnie-the-Pooh. The League of Nations accepts Germany as the sixth permanent member on the council deeming it a “peace-loving country”.

The Conversation

A brief history of sugar

A few thousand years ago, sugar was unknown in the western world. Sugarcane, a tall grass first domesticated in New Guinea around 6000BC, was initially chewed for its sweet juice rather than crystallised. By around 500BC, methods to boil sugarcane juice into crystals was first developed in India.

The Conversation

Robert Burns and Mary, Queen of Scots: how the poet shaped the enduring cultural legacy of the executed monarch

Internationally synonymous with Scottish identity, Robert Burns is Scotland’s national bard, a status he has achieved through his popularity since his death in 1796. He wrote some of the country’s most famous poems, including the satirical ode, Address to a Haggis and the rousing Scots Wha Hae. His most well-known…

The Conversation

Come Down to a Lower Place – a Lovecraftian Korean tale about the oppression of female workers and their bodies

The writings of H.P. Lovecraft have seen a renewal of interest in recent years, despite the fact that he was a well-known racist and xenophobe. Writing in the early 20th century, he imagined monsters that gave form to fear of difference.

The Conversation

China is becoming more sexually liberal – if you are a man

Sexual attitudes have relaxed significantly in China since the Mao era. Approaching the 50th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s death and the subsequent end of the cultural revolution, there has been a significant de-politicisation of everyday life that some are calling a sexual revolution.

The Conversation

Seven Dials: Netflix series turns Agatha Christie’s country-house mystery into a study of empire and war

It is 1925 and the scene is Chimneys. It’s the English stately pile of the Caterham family, but the penurious Lady Caterham (Helena Bonham Carter), has been forced to rent it to the industrial magnate Sir Oswald Coote (Mark Lewis Jones).

The Conversation

Heated Rivalry matters in a sporting culture that still sidelines queer men

Heated Rivalry, the HBO TV adaptation of the second book in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, rounded out 2025 as a surprise, word-of-mouth success. It captures the relationship between Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya (Connor Storrie), two professional male hockey players, over the course of almost a decade. Along the…

1 2 3 4 5

People

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

Organisations

the Natural History Museum

Charles Dickens Museum

12 stories

Read news from The Economist, FT, and more,
with one subscription

Topics

Places

Fourteen days free

Download the app

One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.