Generations have now grown up with games, but they have long been linked to science fiction and are now the subject of histories, too. Here are five of the bestThere is a lingering misconception about video games that they exist entirely in their own sealed subculture, utterly untranslatable to books or movies. But this has never been the case: in the...

How presidential animosity and diplomatic failures by China and the US have left the island in a perilous stateAs flashpoints go, few come flashier than Taiwan. To pick one incident from a string of recent close calls: the visit of Nancy Pelosi to Taipei in the summer of 2022. Pelosi, then speaker of the House and third in line to the presidency, was...

From the galleries and squats of 90s London to Covid-era New York, a tale of fame and falloutBlue Ruin opens with the protagonist, Jay, delivering groceries to a palatial home in a rich enclave of upstate New York. On the doorstep his customer stands masked; this is happening in the early days of the Covid lockdown. Thus it takes him a moment to recognise...

The former world bank economist argues that neoliberalism paves the way for populismIn 1944 the Austrian-born economist Friedrich Hayek, displaced to Britain, was disquieted by his leftwing academic peers. As Hayek saw it, their political philosophy committed the same error as the fascism that was ravaging his homeland. He wrote that the desire to plan...

What do the careers of Diane Abbott, Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone and John McDonnell tell us about political success?“Persistence,” writes Andy Beckett, “is one of the left’s qualities that its enemies like least.” These hair-shirted zealots spend countless hours meeting, rallying, consciousness-raising, drumming up meagre support for seemingly...

The precarity and dreams of thirtysomething Londoners are adroitly explored in this tender portrait of contemporary queer lifeLondon has long been both literary character and setting, showing its many different faces in fiction from Oliver Twist to Mrs Dalloway, Zadie Smith’s NW to Andrew O’Hagan’s newly published Caledonian Road. Now Evenings and Weekends,...