Stuart Jeffries

Eight-year-old Emily was holed up in the bomb shelter of her friend Hila's house when Hamas terrorists found the two girls – along with Hila's mum, Raaya.

Lack of time, difficulties with scientific rigour, a disinterested public … television meteorologists open up about why they’re so quiet about the reasons for extreme conditions

Stuart Jeffries · 10-min read Half-way through Soundtrack to a Coup D'Etat, John Coltrane and Duke Ellington's soulful version of In a Sentimental Mood is interrupted.

The 97-year-old Herbert Blomstedt is in London today to conduct the Philharmonia. He is one of a very long line of maestros working well into old age

I knew Samuel Beckett's reputation. He didn't like photographers. He didn't want them around really. It's hard to believe I took so many photographs of him.

‘One day, I was summoned to a pub near the Royal Court theatre where Samuel Beckett was looking at my work. “These are wonderful pictures,” he said’

His gloomy, gorgeous paintings have been described as so powerful that they have tempted viewers to oblivion – but many were lost or destroyed. Next year, a major exhibition will gather some 75 together

The leftwing intellectual may be a master of self-justification, but in this book he is clever, cultured and good company

Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life Agnes Callard Allen Lane, pp.416, 25

Instead of the four horsemen of today’s apocalypse — demagoguery, fury, ostracism and abuse — we need, Callard argues, the Socratic virtues