Perhaps it is the rain. The gaggle of BNP protesters standing behind the crowd-control barrier on Tottenham High Road are very subdued. They are almost to a man – they are all men –...
‘Satan’s Grotto’ was the caption to the picture of Saddam Hussein’s hidey-hole on the front page of the Sun the day after the ex-dictator was captured by American forces....
Even though we live in an age of intensive and intrusive media coverage, TV viewers in Israel were lucky to catch a glimpse of the meetings that produced the Geneva Accord. The clip we watched in...
At first Dickens tried to deny that Harold Skimpole, the parasitical aesthete of Bleak House, had been based on his friend Leigh Hunt; but later he confessed, not a little proudly, that the...
In 1995 Michael Howard, the Tory Home Secretary, dismissed Derek Lewis from his post as Director General of the Prison Service and appointed David Ramsbotham Chief Inspector of Prisons. Lewis...
On the morning of 17 April 1998, the Singapore merchant ship Petro Ranger set sail carrying 9600 tonnes of diesel and 1200 tonnes of Jet A-1 fuel for delivery to Vietnam. Three hours beyond...
In June 1994, Bill Clinton came close to launching a ‘pre-emptive strike’ against North Korea’s nuclear reactors at Yongbyon, about sixty miles north of Pyongyang. Then, at the...
By 1995, there were 37 monuments and 113 plaques dedicated to Jean Moulin in France; 978 boulevards, avenues, streets, squares, bridges and stadiums were named after him, as well as more than 365...
Im`pro.vise, v.t. & v.i. 2. to make, provide or do with the tools and materials at hand, usually to fill an unforeseen and immediate need; as he improvised a bed out of leaves. Webster’s...
It is partly because so much appears to be known about William Cobbett (1763-1835) that he is insufficiently understood. Few political writers anywhere and at any time have been more prolific or...
The most dramatic moment occurred the evening after Yom Kippur. We were sitting in the courtyard of Arafat’s Mukatah (compound): a group of Israeli peace activists and Palestinian friends....
The centre of the book trade in Baghdad is al-Mutanabi Street, which runs between the Tigris and Rashid Street, now shabby and decayed but once the city’s commercial heart. The bookshops...
“We have now entered the world of hotel and restaurant guides: some departments will have signs next to the entrance saying ‘HEFCE-commended’, while prospective students will decide whether they...
The California gubernatorial recall was launched by a group called the People’s Advocate, an anti-tax organisation operated by Paul Gann and Ted Costa, the alleged brains behind the 1978...
Will became an ardent public man, working well in those times when reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate good which has been much checked in our days, and getting at last...
What can best be called clear water has started showing, happily, between the Blair regime’s incommensurate ambitions in respect of new weaponry and its chances of being able to realise...
There are different kinds of minorities. The notion of an Egyptian state for the Egyptians, a Jewish state for the Jews, simply flies in the face of reality. What we require is a rethinking of...
The first of these books is the product of an interdisciplinary conference at which literary critics and historians exchanged perspectives on a year conspicuous both for political conflict and...