Irangate

Edward Said, 7 May 1987

The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey 
by Salman Rushdie.
Picador, 171 pp., £2.95, January 1987, 0 330 29990 5
Show More
Turning the Tide: US Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace 
by Noam Chomsky.
Pluto, 298 pp., £5.95, September 1986, 0 7453 0184 3
Show More
Show More
... and division exactly where, in the case of the Middle East, there is none of either. Senator Christopher Dodd and Representative Steven Solarz, to mention two Contra opponents, are supporters of everything Israel does, and when the connection between the Contras and the Israelis was made public there was a noticeable avoidance of blame for Israel. The ...

The Ground Hostess

Francis Wyndham, 1 April 1983

... not so long as the Kafka. I worked out a route, and set off in plenty of time. At the Notting Hill tube, where I usually boarded a train on the Central Line to carry me east to work, I took one instead on the District Line travelling west. This subtle adjustment of a daily routine had about it something aberrant, as in a dream where perverse and ...

One Summer in America

Eliot Weinberger, 26 September 2019

... been studying philosophy, tweets: ‘TRUTH IS A FORCE OF NATURE!’*The director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, earlier told the Judiciary Committee that ‘Russians are absolutely intent on trying to interfere with our elections’ in the future, and Mueller says: ‘It wasn’t a single attempt. They’re doing it as we sit here.’ A report by the ...

The Ribs of Rosinante

Richard Gott, 21 August 1997

Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life 
by Jon Lee Anderson.
Bantam, 814 pp., £25, April 1997, 0 593 03403 1
Show More
Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara 
by Jorge Castañeda, translated by Marina Castañeda.
Bloomsbury, 480 pp., £20, October 1997, 0 7475 3334 2
Show More
Show More
... body, on a stretcher strapped to the landing rails of a helicopter, arrived in the Bolivian hill town of Vallegrande. He had been shot some four hours earlier, on the orders – we were to discover much later – of the High Command of the Bolivian Army.I had spent the previous Saturday, with two other journalists, visiting the headquarters of the ...

Reasons for Liking Tolkien

Jenny Turner: The Hobbit Habit, 15 November 2001

... he writes to his first-born, Michael, in 1941. ‘My dearest,’ he addresses his younger son, Christopher, in 1944.What else can we learn from Tolkien’s letters? Well, he loved trees and the English countryside, and hated cars and machinery. He hated France and the French, although he did like Venice: ‘elvishly lovely’, he said. He loathed ‘that ...

The Satoshi Affair

Andrew O’Hagan, 30 June 2016

... like that.’ ‘And how did that change?’ Ramona said a single word: ‘Rob.’ The days in St Christopher Place were almost languorous. We would bring coffee back to the flat and spread out, and I’d try to build a picture of how he did what he said he did. We put up whiteboards and he bamboozled me with maths. Sometimes he would write at the board for ...