AlibabaProfileJack Ma's Alibaba Group helped transform Chinese commerce; he is China's richest man and a hero to budding entrepreneursThe rumour this week spread like wildfire: could it be possible that Jack Ma, one of China's greatest success stories, was planning to leave the mainland for good?
On Tuesday Hong Kong's Economic Journal claimed that Alibaba founder Ma planned to move to Hong Kong next year on an investment immigration scheme. The news went viral on Chinese social media sites.
Autumn arts preview 2019Margaret AtwoodAs excitement mounts for The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, we talk to publishers and fellow writers about the great novelist
The hoopla around the launch of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments is more reminiscent of the unveiling of an iPhone or something Pokémon-related than that of a mere book. On the evening of 9 September, 400 people will gather outside the doors of Waterstones’ Piccadilly store in London for the midnight release of the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, her dystopian novel-turned-feminist touchstone-turned-meme-machine.
Naughty rather than dirty: 50 years of Man About the House, the sitcom that introduced sex to
2024-04-14
TelevisionThe groundbreaking flat-sharing comedy’s very concept terrified ITV. Its writer and actors reflect on its smashing of gender stereotypes and the wildly successful spin-offs it launched
According to Philip Larkin’s poem Annus Mirabilis, “sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three.” But sex in peak-time television did not start – and, then, only fumblingly and furtively – until 1973. On 15 August that year, ITV premiered the sitcom Man About the House.
Oh dear, Mrs Robinson
2024-04-14
TheatreReviewThe Graduate
Gielgud Theatre, London Rating: * *First there was the book by Charles Webb. Then came the famous Mike Nichols movie. Now Terry Johnson, as adapter and director, has attempted to turn this iconic 60s story into a stage show. But it seems an extravagantly pointless affair: stripped of the movie's slick, synthetic glamour, you suddenly glimpse the fragile, anti-intellectual nature of the fable beneath.
By now everyone knows the story of Ben Braddock, the alienated graduate who rebels against middle class mores first by sleeping with the terminally bored Mrs Robinson and then by abducting her daughter.
Revolutionary poster designs from cold-war Cuba – in pictures Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email An upcoming exhibition at London’s House of Illustration collects 185 posters and magazines from Cuba’s golden age of design, from the 1960s to the early 90s. “The posters tell us that Cuba sees supporting the struggles of liberation movements internationally as an integral part of its own revolution,” says curator Olivia Ahmad.
UK newsThe dream that led to a brutal deathHow a young Polish woman's hopes of a better life in Britain ended in her murderAt 12.51pm on a humid Saturday at the end of July a motorist pulled his car up on the grassy verge of a narrow country lane in Buckinghamshire. Jumping out, he headed into the woods intent on taking a quick pee. He saw the smoke before he saw the charred body.
The short life of Kaycee Nicole | Media
2024-04-14
Media This article is more than 22 years oldThe short life of Kaycee NicoleThis article is more than 22 years oldFor two years, a young American girl recounted her brave struggle against leukaemia in a daily online diary. This month she died. Thousands of web-users sent condolences. But, as Bobbie Johnson reveals, there was just one problem ...More internet news
Kaycee Nicole was a teenage girl from midwestern America. She was an intelligent, optimistic high-school student just like any other.
Colm TóibínReviewDroll, careful reflections on Ireland, illness and religion in a welcome collection of essays
In one of the essays in A Guest at the Feast, Colm Tóibín declares: “God represents a real problem for the novelist. The novel is happier in a secular space.” He is writing about Marilynne Robinson, a writer skilled, as he says, at “making religious thought easy” – easy for the reader, however unbelieving, to accept.
Dom Moraes | India | The Guardian
2024-04-13
IndiaObituaryDom MoraesBrilliant young writer, whose star, lauded by bohemian London, dimmed in later life"For Alan - best wishes for a voice he won't lose, Dom," were the words that Dom Moraes inscribed in a copy of his Collected Poems: 1957-1987, which he presented to me over brunch in his Bombay home one morning in November 1988.
That was the last time I met Dom, who has died, aged 66, of cancer.