Ever Closer Union?

Perry Anderson, 7 January 2021

... from the populations over which it presides, that is sufficient for its purposes. Fear of the unknown is the more important integument.Some of the books consulted in the writing of this essay:Project Europe: A History by Kirin Klaus Patel (Cambridge, 2020)Juges et avocats généraux de la Cour de Justice de l’Union européenne (1952-1972): Une approche ...

Father! Father! Burning Bright

Alan Bennett, 9 December 1999

... his neck giving way sharply to the white of his body. The division between his known head and the unknown body had shocked Midgley when he had first seen it as a child, when his dad took him swimming at the local baths. It was still the same. He had never sat in the sun all his life. ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ said Midgley. ‘Are you next of kin?’ It was ...

The Suitcase: Part Three

Frances Stonor Saunders, 10 September 2020

... remaining members of the legation, to Constanţa. Micheline, worried for her daughters and the unknown dangers ahead, left the girls in Bucharest with their grandmother. On the morning of 14 February, the Izmir cast off for Istanbul. Robin made his way south through Bulgaria, which was about to join the Axis powers, and in a matter of days he and Micheline ...

Day 5, Day 9, Day 16

LRB Contributors: On Ukraine, 24 March 2022

... Ukrainian official affiliated with the territorial defence forces reported being contacted by an unknown and unverified American, who assured her that he had combat experience and demanded she issue him a weapon. What was she supposed to say? Welcome to Ukraine, Rambo? Jan-Werner MüllerNietzsche​  is one of the last people one would think of as a guide ...

‘I wouldn’t pay it either’

Simon Skinner: World Cup Wallcharts, 25 June 2026

The Power and the Glory: A New History of the World Cup 
by Jonathan Wilson.
Little Brown, 608 pp., £12.99, May, 978 0 349 14573 0
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... place, some games finished ahead of time, and the identity of some of the goalscorers remains unknown. Argentina’s captain, Manuel Ferreira, left halfway through to sit his law exams, and the US midfielder Andy Auld was temporarily blinded when a physio spilled a bottle of chloroform while treating his split lip. Some teams played in an assortment of ...

The End of British Farming

Andrew O’Hagan: British farming, 22 March 2001

... fallen by half a million acres. When the war began the possible effects of submarine attacks were unknown and there seemed no reason why food should not continue to be imported as before. As a result only the last two of the five harvests were affected by the Food Production Campaign. This came into being early in 1917 with the immediate and urgent task of ...

After Martha

Paul Laity, 25 September 2025

... of the handlebar and her pancreas was pushed against her spine. It is a nasty injury, but far from unknown in children, and is treated in hospital by liver specialists: she was taken to King’s because it has one of the three paediatric liver units in England, and is in London, where we live. Children with pancreatic trauma have been referred there for ...

The Clothes They Stood Up In

Alan Bennett, 28 November 1996

... he reported to the class, ‘it was bollocks.’ The lecturer consoled himself with the hope that, unknown to the caretaker, the evening might have opened doors. In this he was right: the doors in question belonged to the Ransomes’ flat. The police came round eventually, though there was more to it than picking up the phone. The thieves had done that ...

Criminal Justice

Ronan Bennett, 24 June 1993

... to say that it is far from the norm. But then these defendants were far from the norm. It is not unknown for policemen and women to land in the dock. But most of those who do are there for reasons of private corruption. There is a distinction in the police force between ‘bent for yourself’ and ‘bent for the job’. The first term speaks for itself; the ...