Making It Up

Raphael Samuel, 4 July 1996

Raymond Williams 
by Fred Inglis.
Routledge, 333 pp., £19.99, October 1995, 0 415 08960 3
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... couldn’t possibly have been a lover. His massive pipe was scarcely [sic] out for a start – the White Cottage carpets reeked of pipe tobacco for twenty years ... he hadn’t that ‘mind’s recoil upon itself’ which makes possible passionate uncertainty, the loss of all gravity which goes with falling in love, the giving-of-oneself, the abandon. He was a ...

Strap on an ox-head

Patricia Lockwood: Christ comes to Stockholm, 6 January 2022

The Morning Star 
by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken.
Harvill Secker, 666 pp., £20, September 2021, 978 1 910701 71 3
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... the newspaper coverage of the event included photographs of a pastorally beefy Elvis in a white rhinestone jumpsuit, gazing through dark glasses into the bright sun. Oh he was beautiful, with long uncut hair.I went to see his act on opening night: the narrative temptation was too great, and I’m only human. It was my first time in Europe, and I was ...

The Habit of War

Jeremy Harding: Eritrea, 20 July 2006

I Didn’t Do It for You: How the World Used and Abused a Small African Nation 
by Michela Wrong.
Harper Perennial, 432 pp., £8.99, January 2005, 0 00 715095 4
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Unfinished Business: Ethiopia and Eritrea at War 
edited by Dominique Jacquin-Berdal and Martin Plaut.
Red Sea, 320 pp., $29.95, April 2005, 1 56902 217 8
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Battling Terrorism in the Horn of Africa 
edited by Robert Rotberg.
Brookings, 210 pp., £11.99, December 2005, 0 8157 7571 7
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... native, the unpalatable facts would soon become obvious. In such a system, he wrote, ‘the white man’s superiority, the basis of every colonial regime, is undermined.’ Eritrea toiled on under Italian administration into the glory days of Fascism. In 1930, eight years after the March on Rome, Ras Tafari was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie of ...

How We Remember

Gilberto Perez: Terrence Malick, 12 September 2013

... impressions. A train crossing a high bridge near the beginning, with nothing but a blue sky and white clouds in the background, seems headed for heaven; seconds later the narrator is talking about the flames of hell. This is a film of continual interruptions, breaks in perspective and mood. One moment we are asked to respond to the grandeur of nature, the ...

Tankishness

Peter Wollen: Tank by Patrick Wright, 16 November 2000

Tank: The Progress of a Monstrous War Machine 
by Patrick Wright.
Faber, 499 pp., £25, October 2000, 0 571 19259 9
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... the project’s managers and engineers. The design team established themselves in Lincoln at the White Hart and set to work with Foster & Co, Engineers and Boilermakers. After a series of revisions were made by Wilson, the first armoured box (known affectionately as ‘Little Willie’) finally waddled round the factory on 6 September. Unfortunately, it ...

The Saudi Trillions

Malise Ruthven, 7 September 2017

... move, part of a Saudi-UAE effort to counter what they present as Iranian influence. As Richard Sokolsky and Aaron David Miller put it in an article for Politico, The crown prince engineered this dispute not to punish Qatar for its financing of terrorism (a hypocritical comment coming from the Saudis, whose own citizens have provided funding to ...

How to Measure Famine

Alex de Waal, 6 February 2025

... blankets, sang a refrain: ‘There is hunger in Palestine/there is no hunger in Palestine.’ Richard Cook, a director at UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Administration, said to Azoulay that arbitrary, banal impediments to food supplies were jeopardising the nutritional health of many Palestinians.After 7 October 2023, the Israeli government narrowed its ...

Diary

Daniella Shreir: What happens at Cannes, 10 July 2025

... At the opening ceremony the next day, Juliette Binoche took centre stage. Her outfit, an off-white crepe ensemble, had apparently taken couturiers at Dior – whose parent company, LVMH, invests hundreds of millions in Israeli companies – two hundred hours to make. In her speech, she listed the problems of the world: war, poverty, climate ...

Permission to narrate

Edward Said, 16 February 1984

Israel in Lebanon: The Report of the International Commission 
by Sean MacBride.
Ithaca, 282 pp., £4.50, March 1984, 0 903729 96 2
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Sabra et Chatila: Enquête sur un Massacre 
by Amnon Kapeliouk.
Seuil, 117 pp.
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Final Conflict: The War in the Lebanon 
by John Bulloch.
Century, 238 pp., £9.95, April 1983, 0 7126 0171 6
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Lebanon: The Fractured Country 
by David Gilmour.
Robertson, 209 pp., £9.95, June 1983, 0 85520 679 9
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The Tragedy of Lebanon: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventures and American Bunglers 
by Jonathan Randal.
Chatto, 320 pp., £9.50, October 1983, 0 7011 2755 4
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God cried 
by Tony Clifton and Catherine Leroy.
Quartet, 141 pp., £15, June 1983, 0 7043 2375 3
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Beirut: Frontline Story 
by Salim Nassib, Caroline Tisdall and Chris Steele-Perkins.
Pluto, 160 pp., £3.95, March 1983, 0 86104 397 9
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The Fateful Triangle: Israel, the United States and the Palestinians 
by Noam Chomsky.
Pluto, 481 pp., £6.95, October 1983, 0 86104 741 9
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... in the Palestinian case, a homeland for the resolution of its exile since 1948. But, as Hayden White has noted in a seminal article, ‘narrative in general, from the folk tale to the novel, from annals to the fully realised “history”, has to do with the topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or, more generally, authority.’1 Now there are numerous UN ...

Lost in the Void

Jonathan Littell: In Ciudad Juárez, 7 June 2012

... here that Hollywood stars used to come, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller or Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, for a quickie divorce followed by a huge party, or a discreet abortion. ‘Juárez’s bad reputation goes back thirty years,’ says Arnulfo Gómez, the owner of the Gato Félix, on the Avenida Juárez near the bridge. There used to be ten or ...

Let’s consider Kate

John Lanchester: Can we tame the banks?, 18 July 2013

... through the existing culture of banking. Too many bankers share the view of ethics expressed by Richard Desmond at the Leveson Inquiry – ‘Well, “ethical”, I don’t quite know what the word means’ – and see complexity, of the sort arising from the proposed legislation, as an opportunity to make money. In fact, the ethical void revealed by the ...

Blahspeak

Stefan Collini: Aspiration etc…, 8 April 2010

Unleashing Aspiration: The Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions 
Cabinet Office, 167 pp., July 2009Show More
British Social Attitudes: The 26th Report 
National Centre for Social Research, 294 pp., £50, January 2010, 978 1 84920 387 6Show More
An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK: Report of the National Equality Panel 
Government Equalities Office, 457 pp., January 2010Show More
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... structural change in employment over time, may result in, say, many manual jobs being replaced by white-collar jobs but without any significant alteration in the relative status and scale of rewards of most of the class filling those jobs. In 1951, one in every eight jobs was classified as ‘professional’; by 2001, more than one in three jobs were so ...

A Lazarus beside Me

Avies Platt: An Encounter with Yeats, 27 August 2015

... gaunt, aristocratic, very dignified: a strong, yet sensitive face, crowned by untidy locks of white hair: horn-rimmed glasses, through which shone strange, otherworldly eyes. He wore evening dress, with a soft shirt. He leaned slightly forward, resting both hands on the chair in front of him, and on the little finger of his left hand was a ...

Mullahs and Heretics

Tariq Ali: A Secular History of Islam, 7 February 2002

... on pilgrims’ lodgings. The ceremony itself requires that the pilgrim come clothed in a simple white sheet and nothing else. All valuables have to be left behind and local gangs became especially adept at stealing watches and gold. Soon, the more experienced pilgrims realised that the ‘pure souls’ of Mecca weren’t above thieving. They began to take ...