Ten-Foot Chopsticks

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

... tie between patriotism and the climate project, to cover the greening of Britain with red, white and blue, to displace and distract from the far right’s anti-immigrant crusade with a different sort of crusade, one that was both nobly international and explicitly nationalist. Hence, for instance, the name of Ed Miliband’s Great British Energy ...

Day 5, Day 9, Day 16

LRB Contributors: On Ukraine, 24 March 2022

... many) don’t try to disguise their underlying assumption: that ‘civilisation’ is something white people do, and that conflict beyond ‘European’ borders is the natural state of things. ‘War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations,’ Daniel Hannan wrote in the Daily Telegraph. ‘They seem so like us. That is what ...

The Uninvited

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

... can inject into a social landscape in a year. It is nothing new for the non-white immigrant, or would-be immigrant, to have to bear the cost of Europe’s fears for its own stability, but the EU’s wish to keep out asylum seekers is a striking development. Under the International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, they are ...

The Tower

Andrew O’Hagan, 7 June 2018

... in Mile End because the markets were better over there, but at least Westfield was near her now in White City. She was 31. ‘I was born in Egypt 11,426 days ago,’ she told one of her neighbours, pleased with the new app on her iPhone that could count days. Rania was a great fan of Snapchat, she posted there every spare minute she had, and on Instagram and ...

Erasures

Colm Tóibín: The Great Irish Famine, 30 July 1998

... floor of the chancel is set with encaustic tiles with designs in red, brown, pale green, white and rich Wedgwood blue.’ Mass was said in this sumptuous building in 1846 and work continued on the cathedral for the next few years.It seems incongruous now, barely possible that this wealth of detail was being incorporated into an Irish Catholic ...