‘I don’t want to be a backseat driver’: Gordon Brown on Burnham, billionaires – and his vision for a better Britain

The former UK prime minister is still shaping politics (even if he doesn’t want to interfere). He talks about keeping his temper, staying fit – and why he won’t pay £90 for a Scotland football shirt

Robert Carlyle: ‘When we did The Full Monty strip, the reaction from the crowd was terrifying’

The actor on which star he’d devour first on a lifeboat, why he prefers pigeons to dogs and how Trainspotting put the Scottish accent on the map

I was abused as a child – and thought I had healed. Then I began drinking in lockdown

Decades after being sexually abused, the author and doctor Frank Spinelli believed he had moved on emotionally. But alcohol destroyed his sense of security. He describes how he confronted his shame

Art Spiegelman: ‘The US needs a counter-revolution’

More than four decades after his Holocaust story Maus transformed the graphic novel genre, Art Spiegelman discusses Trump, the shadow of 9/11 and the rise of fascism in America

Imelda Staunton: ‘Umbridge’s giggle needed to be short and sharp. So I just did a boom, boom’

The actor answers your questions on working with her dog, becoming a dame, Harry Potter, and making televisual history in The Singing Detective

‘Am I 68? 69?’ Irvine Welsh on growing old, getting clean, bashing out his new novel – and flirting with guns

Three decades after he channelled his heroin addiction into the cult classic Trainspotting, the Scottish author has discovered the joys of yoga, breathwork and standing desks. But is he quite as ‘Zen’ as he claims?

‘I had a really crippling break’: how author Michael Thomas lost 20 years to mania, depression and more

In 2006 the novel Man Gone Down made Thomas famous and won him a €100,000 prize. He expected to produce a follow-up within a year – but life had other plans

‘I never mentioned it for 25 years. I didn’t want to be a victim of the bomb’: Hiroshima survivor Koko Kondo on horror, anger and forgiveness

On that fateful day in 1945, Kondo was just a baby in her mother’s arms. She talks about her father’s newly discovered eye-witness account of the aftermath – and why she decided to continue his work as a peace campaigner

‘People treat each other as disposable’: dating columnist turned novelist Annie Lord on love and sex in the age of apps

Her breakup memoir and Vogue column made her the voice of modern dating. As her debut is published, she talks about single life, oversharing and why she still believes she’ll find love

‘I presumed kids’ books were written by people who were white and dead’: new children’s laureate Patrice Lawrence

The author of Orangeboy, Indigo Donut and Is That Your Mama? plans to use her two-year term to ensure children isolated from reading get involved

Rachel Aviv: ‘There’s a way of writing about motherhood that can be very sentimental and boring’

As one of today’s greatest essayists, the Pulitzer-nominated writer’s new book investigates why the mother-daughter relationship is the most complex bond of all

Anna Funder: ‘I clearly didn’t know what I was doing … but always knew I was going to write’

The writer and newly installed University of Sydney professor on the lure of Berlin, authors versus AI, and writing ‘from a place of admiration’

Edge of Armageddon: why does one of the world’s top thinkers believe we’re nearing nuclear apocalypse?

In a chilling new book, theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli says we’re back on the brink – and this time, leaders chronically lack the nous of Kennedy and Khrushchev. So why is he against rearming?

‘We’re witnessing the end of the America that made our lives possible’: author Eddie Glaude on US’s 250th birthday

Glaude’s new book shows political turmoil historically reaching its boiling point around Fourth of July celebrations

Richer than Musk: Joyce Carol Oates on her 88 years of watching, writing, feeling and loving

The writer made headlines when she accused the world’s wealthiest man of lacking joy, culture, a sense of beauty … Meanwhile, her own life has been an attempt to understand and explain the world. She talks us through her latest book