RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
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Best of 2024: Andy Hedgecock
Two books and a film that examine cultural excavation and the impact of place on behaviour
AH 2024
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
New releases from The Tenementals, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin, and Kuunatic
SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
PAUL KNOX’s London: A History of 300 Years in 25 Buildings (Yale, £25) is a salmagundi of celebration, inquest, polemic and prophecy.
Each chapter is the biography of a building in which architectural analysis triggers thoughts on fashion, morality, marketing, celebrities, ergonomics, local government and the collision of past and present. These apparently digressive ideas coalesce into a meta-narrative of the city’s evolving identities.
The oldest building considered is a neoclassical townhouse of the 1750s; the newest is Google’s state-of-the-art UK headquarters (opening in 2025).
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