Criminal Justice

Ronan Bennett, 24 June 1993

... fundamental shift in perceptions must be underway. Other commentators were even more outspoken. Peter Jenkins in the Independent described the law as ‘an enemy of justice’. He went on: Plainly, after what has happened, radical changes are required in the whole system of police interrogation and in the law relating to confessions. But not only that, the ...

One Exceptional Figure Stood Out

Perry Anderson: Dmitri Furman, 30 July 2015

... by Rome dealt a huge blow to this pretension. Political resistance proved futile; three times Jews rose in revolt against Roman rule, and each time were crushed. But there was a religious route out of the crisis in the teaching of Jesus, an ecstatic who believed in his own divinity, which Paul could transform into a faith beyond Judaism, no longer defined by ...

The Laying on of Hands

Alan Bennett, 7 June 2001

... She was in the next pew, but spotting the cigarettes the spirits of a recently ennobled novelist rose. ‘You can smoke,’ she whispered. Her companion shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘I see no signs saying not. Is that one?’ Fumbling for her spectacles she peered at a plaque affixed to a pillar. ‘I think,’ said her friend, ‘that’s one ...

Where will we live?

James Meek: The Housing Disaster, 9 January 2014

... of the poor and disadvantaged claiming housing benefit in expensive privately rented property rose. Many people who bought their council houses sold them on to private landlords, who rented them to people on housing benefit who couldn’t get a council house, at double or triple the levels of council rent.Right to Buy thus created an astonishing leak of ...

Somerdale to Skarbimierz

James Meek, 20 April 2017

... nous of the Swiss – Henri Nestlé, Rodolphe Lindt, Jean Tobler, Philippe Suchard and Daniel Peter, the inventor of milk chocolate. Just before the end of the First World War, Cadbury and Fry undertook a defensive merger to protect themselves against takeover by Nestlé. It turned out Fry was worth much less than Cadbury; Cadbury accordingly became the ...

Memoirs of a Pet Lamb

David Sylvester, 5 July 2001

... unpronounceable beginning with a hiss and the name of Sylvester was conferred on him. His wife was Rose Waxman, a sister of two leading Yiddish actors, Maurice and Fanny Waxman, whose roles on the London and New York stages included Hamlet and Medea. My father was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, grew up in Darlington, and always had a slight Northern accent. He ...

Courage, mon amie

Terry Castle: Disquiet on the Western Front, 4 April 2002

... for tens of thousands of people.’Other female obsessives work in austere isolation. The late Rose E.B. Coombs MBE, former Special Collections Officer at the Imperial War Museum, is the author of Before Endeavours Fade: A Guide to the Battlefields of the First World War (1976 and 1994). Miss Coombs’s bleak volume, illustrated with her own amateur ...

The Uninvited

Jeremy Harding: At The Rich Man’s Gate, 3 February 2000

... from Marseille to Oran and come overland in the hope of obtaining a visa to Lisbon. Ugarte (Peter Lorre), a forger and procurer of documents, asks Rick to look after two sets of safe-conduct papers until his clients arrive. ‘You despise me, don’t you?’ he says to Rick. ‘You object to the kind of business I do, huh? But think of all those poor ...