“... recent claims is that 1.5 billion people watched the 2022 final in Lusail. Football, as Jonathan Wilson has done as much as any football writer to demonstrate, matters in multiple dimensions, but the World Cup has a magnetism all its own, drawing in millions who don’t otherwise watch much football. Observing its rites and rituals sustains the ...”

“... began​ with a walk-in. In August 2010 a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer approached Jonathan Bank, then the CIA’s station chief at the US embassy in Islamabad. He offered to tell the CIA where to find bin Laden in return for the reward that Washington had offered in 2001. Walk-ins are assumed by the CIA to be unreliable, and the response from ...”

“... but tinged with madness. It is like confusing the voyage of the Beagle with an easter egg hunt. You aren’t uncovering new knowledge about the universe, just a trail another human dropped there only half an hour before. But then, that’s always true to some extent of literary criticism. For Tolkien fans, as for fans of Joyce or Beckett, the ...”