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Feb 12, 2020

How amnesia made Neighbours forget itself

The year is 1988: Margaret Thatcher has become the UK’s longest-serving 20th-century prime minister; Prince Charles has narrowly avoided...

Jan 31, 2020

Umrao Jaan Ada's tale of courtesans and toxic men makes an unempowering musical

Even by the standards of Bollywood sagas, Umrao Jaan is complex and melodramatic. It is based on what is considered the first Urdu novel,...

Dec 24, 2019

My mother was dying – but my best friend brought happiness to a brutally sad day

The year 2012 had been a long and difficult one. One of three, in fact. It had been three years since my mum was diagnosed with terminal...

Nov 18, 2019

Treating mental health with an app: Chips with Everything podcast

I spoke on the Guardian's flagship technology podcast, Chips with Everything, about the growing market in digital therapy apps. You can...

Jul 28, 2019

'So flawed and problematic': why the term 'world music' is dead

Ask most musicians what genre they play and you’ll likely get a prickly response. As one well-known, and slightly tipsy, jazz musician...

Apr 13, 2019

I’ll never see Mum again. But I’ve learned to live with Mother’s Day

I can’t remember the last Mother’s Day I spent with my mum. It would have been in 2013, since in August of that year she died, but the...

Jan 14, 2019

Why are we so obsessed with young, successful people like Sally Rooney?

When 27-year-old novelist Sally Rooney became the youngest-ever winner of the Costa Book Prize last week, it was to deafening cheers of...

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