Depicting Europe

Perry Anderson, 20 September 2007

... for the labours of its president, Giscard d’Estaing, assisted by a British factotum, John Kerr, the two real authors of the draft, their presence was of no consequence. The future charter of Europe was written for the establishments of the West, the governments of the existing 15 member states who had to approve it, relegating the countries of ...

How to Grow a Weetabix

James Meek: Farms and Farmers, 16 June 2016

... the responsibility of running the country; the black middle class Smith was apparently trying to foster; the paternalistic British-descended white farmers who paid their black workers partly in money, partly in food; the harsh Afrikaner farmers who chained their black workers up; the even less pleasant Portuguese. Of all his Rhodesia memories he was most ...

Ten-Foot Chopsticks

James Meek: The North-East Transition, 4 December 2025

... in the North, campaigned against Britain joining the EEC at the 1975 referendum. His successor, John Ryman, later jailed for (non-political) fraud, also disdained the Common Market. He called Helmut Schmidt a ‘patronising Hun’. Ronnie Campbell was a die-hard Lexiter; his Tory successor, Ian Levy, rode to victory on Brexit. The figures from the 1975 ...

The Tower

Andrew O’Hagan, 7 June 2018

... aunt and uncle and three children’ he had worked with; some of them had been approved as foster carers. David had family meetings with them and had spoken regularly to them on the phone. ‘I guess that was the first thing I was thinking,’ he said, ‘about any families that we knew or have known, and just checking, are they OK? Are they alive and ...