Godwin (4th Estate) by Joseph O’Neill. Joseph O’Neill remains best known for Netherland (2008). Hailed as a Great American ...

The creation of global mushroom maps is unearthing new species and teaching us how they support Earth’s ecosystem ...

Hopeful Pessimism (Princeton University Press 2025) by Mara van der Lugt ...

As big questions go, you can’t get much bigger than “What is the meaning of life?” It is a question that is often modified slightly, becoming “Does life have a purpose?” One can quibble over the ...

Photo credit: Bruno Litaldi via Unsplash The Landscapes of Science and Religion: What Are We Disagreeing About? (Oxford University Press) by Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite This is an intelligent, ...

Credit: James Eades via Unsplash Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter (William Collins) by Kat Hill In the summer of 1847, Oxford academic Arthur Hugh Clough, in a slump, travelled north to the Scottish ...

He points to figures like Jordan Peterson, who may be filling the vacuum that New Atheism left behind. Peterson offers sometimes controversial advice on how to live a good and fulfilling life which, ...

“Truth’s a menace, science is a public danger,” says Mustapha Mond, the “Controller” in Aldous Huxley’s iconic dystopian novel Brave New World. “That’s why we so carefully limit the scope of its ...

London's Soho in 1976 The Diaries of Mr Lucas: Notes from a Lost Gay Life (Atlantic Books) by Hugo Greenhalgh Meet George Leo Lucas. At the turn of the 1970s, he is a middle-aged civil servant in ...

A tribute to the late Caspar Melville – writer, musicologist, and former editor of New Humanist. Now that I am in my late eighties, I have sadly become used to losing good friends of a similar age.

The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People (Princeton University Press) by Paul Seabright Not long ago, religion seemed to be in terminal decline. But, as Paul Seabright ...

“The Crucifixion” (c. 1340) by Paolo Veneziano. Credit: Alamy Heresy: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God (Picador) by Catherine Nixey Many of us suffer from the cognitive bias known as the “just ...