Culture

Sardines on toast used to be the dinner of last resort. Today, thanks in part to a man in a fez, they are a foodie obsession

Young people have turned away from the French classic – but that doesn’t mean the end of artisan boulangeries

In countries like Britain with no strong baby naming traditions, Lily, Ivy and Elsie can disappear for decades before returning to popularity

Which syllables should be stressed is a cause of stress – so here’s a guide

Dead Pioneers are ferocious – and furious about stolen lands and centuries of being erased

A new history finds divisions that predate colonialism - and suggests that the future might be federal

The origin of the hat’s name comes from the location of berries used to dye its felt

Digging into the detail and data to separate the noise from the news

Never mind Saturday Night Live UK, the most biting indictments of politics and culture are now on your laptop or phone

It’s depressing to see tiny children glued to screens and worrying to think what this total absorption in tech will do to their young minds. Are we raising a generation of screen-addicted zombies?

Authoritarian governments have pushed Farsi’s dominance – but 59 other languages still thrive

New research suggests that mysterious symbols carved by early humans may have functioned like a primitive writing system

His new documentary series profiles delusional misogynists. Will the women in their lives ever push back against them?

Traditional English music is booming again, but extremists are trying to jump on the bandwagon

Digging into the detail and data to separate the noise from the news

From Imogen Poots to Orwell 2+2=5, the best actors and films that weren't even nominated

This September, I will have lived in the UK for longer than I lived in France. And yet the defining characteristic of British society still remains, to me, a total mystery

Smoking and drinking might be bad for the health, but sitting around with people who see the world differently can have profoundly beneficial effects

How a genuinely old dialect word became part of a made-up East Anglian pub game

A narcissistic trend is teaching young men the worst lesson women were ever taught: your appearance is everything

Digging into the detail and data to separate the noise from the news

How a Greek word for sanctuary became one of the most contested terms in modern English

How the widow of Martin Luther King Jr transformed mourning into a lifelong movement

Digging into the detail and data to separate the noise from the news

One guilty purchase was all it took for the algorithm to start stalking me

The veteran presenter of the BBC Radio 4 show, which I co-created, is a tough act to follow, but Misha Glenny seems equal to the task

Despite its strong association with US sport and policing, the term ‘rookie’ has a complicated history

Some familiar words we use in everyday English carry surprising traces of Malay, a language spoken widely across south-east Asia

Being constantly reachable fuels our self-importance. But there is a better way

It is the second most-spoken first language in the world, and opens doors across continents and careers – yet British schools still insist on teaching French

The social contract must be revitalised or populists will replace it with something much worse. That means citizenship should involve allegiance to a shared way of life

Digging into the detail and data to separate the noise from the news