FROM THE EDITOR
MASTHEAD
CONTRIBUTORS
LETTERS

THIS SEASON

The best things to see and hear in the next two months, from the Glastonbury festival to photography by Arab women in Boston

INTELLIGENCE

THE BIG QUESTION
What is the best speech ever made? Six writers decide
THE WINE-LIST INSPECTOR
Drinking in Munich with Tim Atkin
FOOD
Eat Their Words: cooking with Alain Ducasse
Lipsmacking: the paté that gets the juices flowing in Sydney
My Madeleine: Yiyun Li remembers the rationing queues in China
THE MUSIC OF SCIENCE
Life off Earth: what about the babies?
THE PASSENGER
Jonathan Meades on a Mercedes made for Fangio
A GAME, A GADGET AND AN APP
A Lego adventure and DJ-ing on the move
READING THE GAME
Ed Smith on Tiger Woods’s next step

STYLE

MAIN FEATURE
Did the Eighties ever end? By Peter York
APPLIED FASHION
Rebecca Willis on the power of flowers
THE LINE OF BEAUTY
A brief history of underwear
THE SCEPTICAL SHOPPER
The Kindle and its rivals
MAN IN A SUIT
A Broadway producer in something loud

FEATURES

THE FALLOUT
Two years on from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Henry Tricks shows what it has meant for one man
SAND
From toddlers in playgrounds to adults on holiday, sand bewitches us. Rebecca Willis works out why
PHOTO ESSAY
The strange beauty of abandoned stations, captured by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre
WHAT THEATRE IS FOR
A memoir by Irving Wardle, who had a ringside seat all the way from John Osborne to Robert Lepage

CULTURE

AUTHORS ON MUSEUMS
Neil Gaiman on a painting he is crazy about
FILM
Charles Nevin watches the classic movies he missed
MOOD MUSIC
Clemency Burton-Hill plays a melancholy tune
AT THE CINEMA
Tom Shone on “Before Midnight”
BOOKS
Notes on a Voice: Margaret Atwood, by Peter Kemp
Found in Translation: Karl Ove Knausgaard
Six Good Books: Maggie Fergusson on Claire Messud et al
VISUAL CV
Nicholas Barber picks the best of Pixar

PLACES

MAIN FEATURE
The island off Savannah that produces delicious pork
GOING NATIVE
When in...Edinburgh, for the festival
SEVEN WONDERS
Chosen by John Eliot Gardiner, conductor
A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
William Fiennes hikes up a volcano
CARTOPHILIA
The eve of the first world war, by Max Hastings
BACK PAGE
LANDSCAPES OF THE MIND with Robert Macfarlane