“... next chapter in the apocalyptic story that began in Australia with the bushfires in the summer of 2019-20 before moving straight on to the Covid pandemic.From the standpoint of the prime minister, Scott Morrison, perhaps looking for a national security scare to lift his approval ratings in the run-up to the elections in May, Russia was unquestionably part of ...”

“... Ever since​ the arrival of Covid-19 – in Western Europe, roughly at the end of January – sales of Albert Camus’s The Plague, first published in 1947, have increased exponentially, an upsurge strangely in line with the graphs that daily chart the toll of the sick and the dead. By the end of March, monthly sales of the UK Penguin Classics edition had grown from the low hundreds to the mid-thousands and were rising (they are now up 1000 per cent ...”

“... patron of new writing as well as of new music. Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, broadcast in January 1954, may be the most celebrated piece of literature it’s hard to imagine coming into existence without radio; more generally, plays written for radio have adapted or reinvented an established form. But the great filler was music, especially varieties ...”

“... trial, but any of his victims who wanted to would be able to make victim impact statements, On 16 January 2018 the women he abused began giving their statements; seven days later, Denhollander was the last of 156 victims to speak. A letter Nassar wrote to the judge, Rosemarie Aquilina, made clear that he still felt no responsibility. ‘What I did in the ...”

“... to the US Conservative Political Action Conference. CPAC itself has held meetings in Brazil (2019-25), Mexico (2022) and Argentina (2024). Following its foundation in Spain in 2020, the Foro Madrid has held exuberant follow-ups in Bogotá, Lima, Buenos Aires and Asunción.Goldstein shows that Vox-facilitated connections with Eastern European figures such ...”

“... factor to Lord Leverhulme, who was on the verge of buying Harris, wrote that for seven weeks from January to March no cargo at all had been landed from Glasgow, with the result that for the last ten days of that time there had been no food in the local shops: ‘the people were without butter or margarine, no sugar, no bacon … The whole position is really ...”

“... been thought of as both the pace-setter and the anchor of European politics. But in the summer of 2019, the political scene in Berlin is in greater flux than at any time since the Second World War. The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland, founded in April 2013 in reaction to the Eurozone crisis, surged into the Bundestag in the 2017 election with 12.6 per ...”

“... of silence’ they had inherited, and assumed some of that suffering as their own. In February 2019, Branche received a letter from the daughter of an appelé who had died more than twenty years earlier:This morning, at five o’clock, I finally began your book on torture and the army in Algeria. I have formulated this phrase for the first time: so my ...”

“... to sleep’.As part of this project to monopolise our ears, Spotify has moved beyond music. Since 2019 it has made a series of expensive investments in podcasting, buying production companies such as Gimlet and the Ringer, striking deals to produce shows with the Obamas and Prince Harry and Meghan, and paying more than $200 million for the exclusive rights to ...”

“... no ford-fire.com. Tesla had nearly gone bankrupt in 2008, and again between 2017 and 2019: even as he was on track to be the richest man in the world, he couldn’t stop worrying that his company might fall apart. If consumers weren’t confident that Teslas were roadworthy, it wasn’t just that he would lose nearly all his money, Musk ...”

“... to run until Christmas this year, but he was transferred to prison in Germany and released in January 2021.) Germany does not extradite to the US, so the five other senior executives charged by the US authorities were safe from the Feds. A number of them were tried in Germany, where they were all acquitted. It turned out that the demanding, notoriously ...”

“... when he suggested she use a pseudonym. She got a second job behind the till at Arundel. But in January 2014 the Court of Cassation found Knox and Sollecito guilty for a second time. Faced with the threat of extradition and a 28-year prison sentence, Knox once again considered suicide. Meanwhile, her family plotted to smuggle her to safety. ‘At ...”

“... his belief in socialism and a hostility to the EU that began long before Brexit had a name. In 2019, when he stood down, his would-be successor was beaten by a Conservative in Boris Johnson’s get-Brexit-done landslide. A picture from the night shows Johnson pounding the air with his fists and gurning in triumph at the Blyth result, the first time Labour ...”

“... the US, where ‘free speech’ has, on the right, been increasingly evacuated of principle. In January, the presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis inaugurated his second term as governor of ‘the free state of Florida’ by declaring, ‘We will never surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.’ His project to restore freedom to his state ...”

“... the palace grounds. ‘The emperor collected their droppings every Sunday afternoon between January 2009 and December 2013,’ the Kyodo news agency reported, ‘and examined plant seeds contained in them through a microscope.’The imperial family enjoy almost none of the perks of royalty: this is the greatest contrast with the British royal ...”