Somerdale to Skarbimierz

James Meek, 20 April 2017

... the early years his cocoa got a warrant from Queen Victoria but by 1861, when his sons George and Richard took over the factory, now in different premises, the business was on the brink. A new product the Cadburys had been counting on to turn things around, a drink called Iceland Moss, made of cocoa mixed with lichen, failed to find favour with the public.The ...

Mullahs and Heretics

Tariq Ali: A Secular History of Islam, 7 February 2002

... breaking away from what he described as ‘the emptiness of the feudal world’.1Since I did not read Arabic, I could learn the Koran only by rote. My tutor, Nizam Din, arrived on the appointed day and thanks to his heroic efforts, I can at least recite the lines from the opening of the Koran – ‘Alif, lam, mim . . .’ – followed by the ...

The German Question

Perry Anderson: Goodbye to Bonn, 7 January 1999

... outlook in 25 years. He has already seen off Schröder’s attempt to install a wan version of Richard Branson as Minister of the Economy, and shaken the composure of the Bundesbank. The direction of the Government, of course, will not be set by the SPD leadership alone. The rules of any German coalition give significant leverage to the lesser partner. The ...

Depicting Europe

Perry Anderson, 20 September 2007

... in Paris: Carl Bildt, a founder member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, along with Richard Perle, William Kristol, Newt Gingrich and others. In the UK, the local counterpart has proudly restated his support for the war, though here, no doubt, the corpses were stepped over in pursuit of preferment rather than principle. Spaniards and Italians ...

NHS SOS

James Meek, 5 April 2018

... more than 16 hours to be admitted. An A&E consultant at the Royal Stoke University Hospital, Dr Richard Fawcett, broadcast his frustration on Twitter. ‘It breaks my heart,’ he wrote, ‘to see so many frail and elderly patients in the corridor for hours and hours … I personally apologise to the people of Stoke for the Third World conditions of the ...

How to Grow a Weetabix

James Meek: Farms and Farmers, 16 June 2016

... windows. He had a cold and drank from a pint glass of amber liquid – juice or some remedy. I’d read that he’d spent time in Rhodesia and asked him about it. He worked in Rhodesia in the 1970s as a young soil scientist preventing earth on white-owned farms being washed away by the rain. He became fond of the country, then run by Ian Smith’s white ...

After Kemal

Perry Anderson, 25 September 2008

... Dream, Caroline Finkel’s massive 550-page history of the Ottoman Empire published in 2006, we read that ‘terrible massacres took place on both sides.’ As for genocide, the very word is a misfortune, which not only ‘bedevils any wider understanding of the history of the fate of Ottoman Armenians’ – not to speak of ‘Turkish foreign relations ...

Chasing Steel

Ian Jack: Scotland’s Ferry Fiasco, 22 September 2022

... too. When he gave evidence to the audit committee seven years later, the convener, the Labour MSP Richard Leonard, suggested to McColl that the announcement of Ferguson’s as the preferred bidder ‘must have strengthened your hand in any negotiations that were taking place’. McColl disagreed: subsequent negotiations had taken longer than he had expected ...

The Tower

Andrew O’Hagan, 7 June 2018

... in the flats above and below don’t even know there’s been a fire. This was something else.’ Richard Welsh is a senior officer with the London Fire Brigade. His pager went off at 1.18 a.m. ‘Initially they had six machines there,’ he said. ‘Then they asked for eight, and then ten, and then 15, 20, and then 25. I’m hearing that on the way there, so ...