Short Cuts: The Crimean Tatars

David Motadel, 17 April 2014

The strongest​ local resistance to Putin’s annexation of Crimea has come from the peninsula’s Muslim minority. The Crimean Tatars, 12 per cent of the population, largely boycotted...

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Closed Material

Nicholas Phillips, 17 April 2014

Closed material is evidence put before the court that is not merely concealed from the public, but from the other party.

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This interesting, careful and occasionally outrageous book explores the complex interaction and competition between the attitudes of affirmation and regret that are almost inevitable as we look...

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Not in the Public Interest

Stephen Sedley, 6 March 2014

In 1916 the secretary of the Anti-German Union, Sir George Makgill, a Scottish baronet of extreme right-wing views, brought judicial review proceedings to remove from the Privy Council two wealthy Jewish...

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Sisi’s Turn: What does Sisi want?

Hazem Kandil, 20 February 2014

Three years after its once inspiring revolt, Egypt has become a police state more vigorous than Nasser’s.

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One of the ways​ in which literary texts are capacious is their ability to contain, within themselves, imaginary books: books that the more literal-minded real world isn’t yet able to...

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Faking the Canon: Forging the Bible

Diarmaid MacCulloch, 6 February 2014

Other faiths have sacred books aplenty, but you can imagine them existing perfectly well as religious practices and ways of life in the absence of any particular one of their holy texts. Not so Christianity....

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You might think you’re looking at an advent calendar, but there is no Nativity in this stunning set of paintings from the church of Däräsge Maryam in northern Ethiopia. The church...

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Wrong Kind of Noise: Silence is Best

Marina Warner, 19 December 2013

By a bizarre twist, G.K. Chesterton may be en route to sanctity: it was reported in August that the Bishop of Northampton has begun a suit for his canonisation. Diarmaid MacCulloch doesn’t...

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Short Cuts: The Lobbying Bill

Francis FitzGibbon, 19 December 2013

The Lobbying Bill – due to complete the Lords committee stage before Christmas – is intended ‘to ensure that people know whose interests are being represented by consultant...

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Disappearing Acts: Aquinas

Terry Eagleton, 5 December 2013

Born around 1225 near the small southern Italian town of Aquino, Thomas Aquinas attended the University of Naples, and while in the city entered the Dominican Order. He then went north to pursue...

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The Pig Walked Free: Animal Trials

Michael Grayshott, 5 December 2013

Crucifixions, burnings, boilings: the walls, windows and alcoves of churches and cathedrals are adorned with all manner of sticky ends. The Church of the Holy Trinity in Falaise, Normandy once...

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Double Doctrine: The Enlightenment

Colin Kidd, 5 December 2013

In the course of 15 years teaching history at the University of Glasgow, with between a hundred and fifty and two hundred students in my classes, I inevitably received a few complaints. Some have...

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Unlike a Scotch Egg: Hate Speech

Glen Newey, 5 December 2013

‘You are a totalitarian asshole.’ It’s probably not the sort of email that often drops into an All Souls professor’s inbox but, as Jeremy Waldron tells us, some people...

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Short Cuts: Shakespeare in Guantánamo

Dominic Dromgoole and Clive Stafford Smith, 7 November 2013

In an attempt to avoid being held liable for any mistreatment of detainees the Guantánamo Bay medical staff have adopted Shakespearean names. Until recently, some of the doctors there used...

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The Logic of Nuremberg: Nuremberg’s Logic

Mahmood Mamdani, 7 November 2013

In March, General Bosco Ntaganda, the ‘Terminator’, former chief of military operations for the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity,...

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Shag another: In Bed with the Police

Katrina Forrester, 7 November 2013

Bob Lambert led two lives. In one, he was a policeman with a wife and children in suburban Herefordshire. In the other, he was an activist in London involved in multiple long-term sexual relationships. 

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The snake slunk off: Jesus the Zealot

Diarmaid MacCulloch, 10 October 2013

Academics, chief among them theologians, are deeply envious of Reza Aslan’s stroke of luck in encountering a particularly stupid Fox News reporter during his round of publicity interviews...

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