The originality of the species
A frenzied desire to be first inspired Darwin and Einstein to bursts of creativity. Like writers and artists, scientists strive to have their names attached to a work of brilliance, but any...
View ArticleLong good reads: the best features from 20 years of G2
Why did we believe Princess Diana, and how would it feel to be under fire in Baghdad, with only the dying for company? Would a burkini be a hit in Oxford – and how did Hilary Mantel rate Kate Moss's...
View ArticleIan McEwan: when faith in fiction falters – and how it is restored
What happens if our faith in novels falters, if we find ourselves unable to suspend disbelief? Ian McEwan on when the 'god of fiction' deserts him – and how he finds his way back to the foldLike a late...
View ArticleMargaret Thatcher: we disliked her and we loved it
What bound all opposition to Margaret Thatcher's programme was a suspicion that the grocer's daughter was intent on monetising human value"Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Out! Out! Out!" That chanted demand of...
View ArticleIan McEwan on Sweet Tooth – Guardian book club
Ian McEwan on the attractions of a cold war settingThe cold war was, and remains, a gift to novelists. A binary struggle on a planetary scale enlivened by complexities of secrecy, distortion, shadow...
View ArticleWhat is the common ground between art and science? And how is Beethoven like...
Novelist Ian McEwan and theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed met at the Science Museum in London to mark the opening of the Large Hadron Collider exhibition. This is an edited extract of their...
View ArticleInternational bill of digital rights: call from 500 writers around the world
In a petition to the United Nations, a group of authors agree that democratic rights must apply in virtual as in real space• State surveillance of personal data is theft, say world's leading authorsA...
View ArticleOn Liberty: Edward Snowden and top writers on what freedom means to them
As the campaining group turns 80, Shami Chakrabarti, Ian McEwan, Tom Stoppard, Julian Barnes and others reflect on libertyWriters have always been a big part of Liberty. Since our very beginnings, as...
View ArticleMy hero: Deborah Rogers by Ian McEwan
My agent was the least self-interested person I've ever met. Her families, the real one and the extensive one she created around her, are reeling at their lossDeborah Rogers, who died last week, became...
View ArticleIan McEwan: the law versus religious belief
The conjoined twins who would die without medical intervention, a boy who refused blood transfusions on religious grounds … The novelist on the stories from the family courts that inspired his latest...
View ArticleIan McEwan on Charlie Hebdo – facing down hatred with laughter
The slaughter in Paris was a tragedy for the open society – the free speech debate must reviveMurderous and self-sanctifying, radical Islam has become a global attractor for psychopaths. It has never...
View ArticleIan McEwan: when I was a monster
In 1975, McEwan’s tales of sibling incest, cross-dressing and cat-roasting children in First Love, Last Rites scandalised critics. Yet today we are no more liberated, just culturally confusedIn 1970,...
View ArticlePenis comment was biologically unexceptional | Letter from Ian McEwan
Not one of the journalists, trans-activists and others who have commented on my remarks at the Royal Institution last week have troubled to complicate matters by finding out my actual views on sexual...
View ArticleBritain is changed utterly. Unless this summer is just a bad dream | Ian McEwan
As the political crisis of our generation continues to unfold and the Tories prepare to choose a new prime minister, most of us can only gossip below-stairsIt’s easy enough these days to wake troubled...
View ArticleIan McEwan: Trump's poetry was hatred. What about the prose?
The implications of all the things the president-elect promised to do are terrifying. True, many of them sound improbable, and perhaps wise counsel and constitutional restraints will prevail. But that...
View ArticleBrexit denial: confessions of a passionate remainer | Ian McEwan
Doubtful we will get the scrutinising parliament we urgently need this week, the novelist believes a youthful pro-European movement is mustering, ready to fight backIn the current state of Brexit...
View ArticleThe Cockroach – an extract from Ian McEwan’s Brexit-inspired novella
In the novelist’s satirical reworking of Kafka’s classic story, an insect wakes up to discover to its horror that it has turned into the prime minister…• Bill Nighy reads an extract from The...
View ArticleBrexit, the most pointless, masochistic ambition in our country's history, is...
The magic dust of populism has blinded reason, and damage and diminishment lie aheadBrexit: Britain wakes up to uncertain future after UK leaves EU – live news It’s done. A triumph of dogged...
View ArticleWe are haunted by ghosts – and Vladimir Putin’s sickly dreams | Ian McEwan
Catastrophe looms in Ukraine and we cannot just be onlookers. If we don’t try everything to stop hostilities, we will never forgive ourselvesHere we are, in our ringside seats at a bloody circus,...
View ArticleHilary Mantel remembered: ‘She was the queen of literature’
The beloved writer of the Wolf Hall trilogy and Beyond Black has died. Here, leading contemporaries pay tribute• Hilary Mantel, celebrated author of Wolf Hall, dies aged 70• The pen is in our hands. A...
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