Susannah Clapp

Theatre Critic of the Observer. Author of 'A Card from Angela Carter' and 'With Chatwin'.

[Samira Ahmed @SamiraAhmedUK]

@MrsNickyClark @BBCFrontRow @boydhilton @susannahclapp It’s brilliant !

[Samira Ahmed @SamiraAhmedUK]

Tonight's @BBCFrontRow: @boydhilton and @susannahclapp are reviewing 1536, Rivals S2 and The Christophers. 715pm R4 or link after... https://t.co/wuq1z4trzi

[Susannah Clapp @susannahclapp]

@Rosiemillard @LRB Oh what a lovely message : thanks so much! Brightened a drab week!

[The Cider Shed @TheCiderShedPod]

Great article by @susannahclapp about our ‘beloved’ #TheArchers and the Art of the Soap.

https://t.co/a6EeRL46ht

[Susannah Clapp @susannahclapp]

@EamonnONeill @PaulChahidi @ObsNewReview Thank you!!!!

[The Observer New Review @ObsNewReview]

The best theatre to see in 2026

The stage next year has a distinctly feminist feel, from a Victoria Wood musical to Tilda Swinton wearing the trousers, writes @susannahclapp

https://t.co/O4fpuRCi0X

[The Observer New Review @ObsNewReview]

The best theatre to see in 2026

The stage next year has a distinctly feminist feel, from a Victoria Wood musical to Tilda Swinton wearing the trousers, writes @susannahclapp

https://t.co/O4fpuRCi0X

[Susannah Clapp @susannahclapp]

https://t.co/F6m6N8DlMp

[James Graham @JamesGrahamAuth]

@donmcgowan Goodwin got annihilated by a chap wearing a grey shirt, we all owe that lad a beer.

[Socialist Opera Singer @OperaSocialist]

A consequence of leaving the ECHR would mean the UK could reintroduce the death penalty, which Farage and Reform seem to want.

Here's Ian Hislop to explain why that's a ridiculous idea 👇👇👇

[Times Radio @TimesRadio]

“The same lack of transparency, the same Bitcoin stuff, the same conflicts of interest, the same disregard for what is actually true.”

Prepare for Nigel Farage and his “Trumpery” in government, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop tells #TimesRadio.

@HelenLewis | @DarrylMorris

[The Observer New Review @ObsNewReview]

Despite a vivid performance from Susan Sarandon, Tracy Letts’s portrait of a woman at different stages of life lacks detail and heart, read @susannahclapp's full review now:
https://t.co/7LQEk5dbPZ

[LBC @LBC]

'The majority of immigrants contribute more than they take.'
'You sound a lot smarter than me.'

Caller Gary vows to 'rethink' his support for Reform after Natasha Devon explains her 'lack of faith' in Farage.

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

My colleagues & I have taken a huge gamble to set up @thenerve_news. We’re trying to build a new independent publication from the ground up. Social media is our only distribution for now.

Sharing this article in your networks would make a huge difference. Thank you! 🙏🙏🙏

[The Observer New Review @ObsNewReview]

'Tragedy teeters on the brink of comedy in the National’s racing, relentless production, redeemed by Francesca Mills’s triumph as Ophelia'

✍️ @susannahclapp

https://t.co/vwR7dJybkR

[Susannah Clapp @susannahclapp]

Thanks @amolrajan for allowing us to hear not unchallenged but not totally obstructed. Cd Nick Robinson to Rachel Reeves : ‘You’re crushed: you cried!!!’

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Here you go, @michaelgove:
Gove’s book is a confused epic of simplistic incomprehension, riddled with more factual errors and misconceptions than any other text I have come across in two decades of reviewing books on this subject. Thus we are solemnly told, for example, that during the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, the Palestinian population from Jenin to Hebron was “herded into, and kept penned up inside, refugee camps”, an idea as novel as it is comically ridiculous and ahistorical. During this period, towns such as Ramallah became sleepy backwaters, quite free from the land seizures and apartheid policies of Arab-free Israeli settlements and Arab-free road networks that followed the Israeli occupation — realities entirely at odds with what Gove calls Israel’s “culture of equality”.

Gove also rewrites history when he alleges it was the “appeasement” of the Palestinians represented by the Oslo peace process that encouraged al-Qa'eda to launch the 9/11 attacks. In fact it was not any offer to make peace, so much as the violent repression that followed Israel’s unilateral ending of peace talks that actually formed the backdrop to the attacks. In his Knights Under the Prophet's Banner, Bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has written that it was the the repressive campaign waged against the second intifada by Sharon in the Autumn of 2000 that provided al-Qa’eda’s opportunity : as the corpses of dead children piled up, al-Zawahiri realized that here was the rallying cry that could unify the Muslim world. All that was needed was a massive strike, and the US system in the Middle East would begin to unravel. And so - thanks partly to Gove's friends in Washington- it has indeed proved, to the peril of us all.

Gove is also quite wrong that few Muslims or Islamists really mind what Israel does to the Palestinians and the Lebanese, and that “it is what Israel is, rather than what Israel does” that really provokes resistance. Instead Israeli violence is the principle cause of anti-American anger- Bin Laden himself has written that it was the sight of US support for the Israeli bombing Beirut in 1982 that initially radicalised him: “they started bombing… I still remember the blood-torn limbs, the women and children massacred. Houses were being destroyed and tower blocks were collapsing… As I looked on those destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the oppressor in kind by destroying towers in America…”

Throughout Gove's book, the old NeoCon myths are reheated and served up, despite being long discredited, most recently by the 2005 CIA report released last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Saddam, believes Gove, “invited Islamists into Iraq” (p130); he was “determined to pursue his WMD programme” and “dreamt of emulating” 9/11, strongly suggesting the central lie of Saddam's non-existent links with 9/11. Gove also repeats the tired old canard that the spread of democracy will exclude the Islamists from power in the Middle East, (p135) despite the evidence from Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt and Algeria that given the option, the newly radicalized Muslim peoples of the region are much more likely to choose fundamentalist candidates over secularists.

At the heart of Celsius 7/7 lies the long-discredited idea that the Islamists are motivated by a deep hatred of freedom: as Bin Laden noted in his 2004 broadcast, if that was so “why we did not attack Sweden?” Instead, it is specifically to fight for freedom from US interference in the Islamic world that al-Qa'eda was formed: “We have been fighting you because we are free men,” said Bin Laden in the same speech. “Just as you violate our security, so we violate yours.”

All terrorist violence , Islamic or otherwise, is contemptible. But just because we condemn does not mean we should not strive to analyse accurately. It is exactly the sort of woolly elisions that Gove indulges in that has got us into the trouble we are now in.

[Will Eaves @WillEaves]

I wish this man were the Prime Minister.

[Susannah Clapp @susannahclapp]

@WillEaves Oh thanks for drawing me to him!

[Susannah Clapp @susannahclapp]

Israel is hunting a monster that it helped to create https://t.co/p6MxGhJPcH