The Independent

Malcolm Gladwell: I wanted to be an academic but then I realised that academics are hedgehogs and I am a fox

29 May 2010 12:00 AM

Malcolm Gladwell is the New Yorker essayist who has also published three best-selling, non-fiction books: The Tipping Point, Blink and The Outliers, but not Jamie Does, which is by Jamie Oliver and is a celebration of food from six different countries. Wake up!

John Maynard Keynes: Can the great economist save the world?

08 November 2008 12:00 AM

Revered in his day, John Maynard Keynes was later pilloried as a dinosaur of big-state meddling by Margaret Thatcher and her fellow free marketeers. But now, as untrammelled capitalism implodes once more, people are asking: could the great economist's ideas really save the world?

Comme des Garçons hits the high street

25 October 2008 12:00 AM

Comme des Garçons has always stood for pioneering fashion. But how will the label reinterpret its ethos for the high-street giant H&M? Susannah Frankel gets a sneak preview

Glamour's golden age: Fashion returns to the high-maintenance Hollywood look

25 October 2008 12:00 AM

It was a time of high glamour – and high maintenance. And now the Golden Age of Hollywood – the 1940s and 1950s – is making a comeback on the catwalk, reports Bethan Cole

Roisin Murphy: Meet the poster girl of cutting-edge chic

25 October 2008 12:00 AM

When I meet the singer Roisin Murphy at a café after the House of Holland show at London Fashion Week, it's hard not to feel as comparatively uncool and drably dressed as a policeman at the Notting Hill carnival. She is wearing a pink and grey shard-patterned sweatshirt by Vivienne Westwood, and huge vintage Courrèges sunglasses, although this is actually quite a subtle look by her striking standards.

Bond ambition: Gemma Arteron swaps Thomas Hardy for Ian Fleming

18 October 2008 12:00 AM

Gemma Arterton graduated from St Trinian's to star as Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Now she's playing opposite Daniel Craig in the new Bond film. Is this the start of global domination for the girl from Gravesend?

Katie Price: 'We love to earn money, who doesn't?'

11 October 2008 12:00 AM

Glamour model, bestselling author, work-out queen, top perfumier, grooming guru, variably-sized bra wearer, horse enthusiast, not to mention wife and mother of three. Katie Price – still occasionally known as Jordan – is not so much a celebrity as a multi-million-pound brand. Next stop? World domination

Religion vs science: can the divide between God and rationality be reconciled?

11 October 2008 12:00 AM

“A clergyman in charge of education for the country’s leading scientific organisation – it’s a Monty Python sketch,” pronounced Britain’s top atheist, Richard Dawkins, recently. How the world turns. In the days of Galileo it was the church which went around persecuting scientists. Now the boot appears to be on the scientific foot. That is how it must feel, at any rate, to Professor Michael Reiss who last month was hounded out of his job as the Royal Society’s director of education by a group of Nobel Prize winners who were outraged not by what he said but by what people might think he had said.

Wall stories: The funny and often beautiful world of graffiti

04 October 2008 12:00 AM

There's a vast conversation going on, and it's happening right now in a street near you. Some of it is funny, some of it is strangely beautiful, some of it is downright disturbing. Paul Vallely has seen the writing on the wall

City of ghosts: Is Berlin finally a fitting place for Jews to visit?

04 October 2008 12:00 AM

For the first time Germany's tourist office has taken a party of British Jews on a trip to Berlin. what did they make of this city of ghosts?

Diamond geezer: Michael Caine goes back to his roots

04 October 2008 12:00 AM

With two Oscars and more than 100 films to his credit, Michael Caine is perhaps our greatest living movie star. In his latest role, he plays a disgruntled Cockney con man in seedy Sixties London. Sounds vaguely familiar? Here, he tells James Mottram about a peculiarly personal project – and explains why he's going back to his roots

Tatu: From Russia with lust

27 September 2008 12:00 AM

The Russian duo Tatu shocked the record-buying public (or titillated it heartily, depending on your point of view) with their faux-lesbian schoolgirl shenanigans a few years ago. Now they're back, older (but still only 23), a little less lesbian and, they say, a lot wiser. Interview by Shaun Walker

Benjamin Stone: Old Blue Eye

27 September 2008 12:00 AM

On Monday, David Cameron is taking time out from his party conference to open a new exhibition of the work of Sir Benjamin Stone, the Tory grandee who was the leading photographer of his day. Sheridan McCoid reports

Well heeled: A rare audience with Manolo Blahnik

27 September 2008 12:00 AM

Manolo Blahnik tumbles into the room wearing an extremely dapper royal-purple suit, purple and yellow knitted tie, orange suede shoes and black circular glasses à la Le Corbusier. He stretches out his hand, and when I shake it he squeaks in pain, shaking, then retracting it. Have I accidentally crushed the phalanges of the world's finest shoemaker with an overly firm grip? Thankfully, no. He has had a sudden attack of cramp. This is the result, he explains, of just having flown in from Spain the previous evening; he is very tired, he says, and a bit disorientated.