Phantom Gold: Victorian Capitalism

John Pemble, 7 January 2016

An MP and financier​ dead from poison on Hampstead Heath; the secretary of a life insurance company in his office with his brains blown out; a stockbroker with his throat cut in a railway...

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Diary: Modi’s Hinduism

Amit Chaudhuri, 17 December 2015

In November​ I had to cancel the teaching I was doing in Norwich to return to Calcutta to visit my mother, who is elderly and ailing. On the 8th, I didn’t pay much attention to the fact...

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Can they? Podemos

Dan Hancox, 17 December 2015

‘I have defeat​ tattooed in my DNA,’ Pablo Iglesias said in a debate on television last year, a month after announcing the formation of a new political entity called Podemos....

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After the Vote

James Meek, 17 December 2015

British air attacks on Syria, before they are an attack on Islamic State, are an attack on Syria, a foreign country, whose citizens have no say in our affairs, and which has not attacked us, or our allies.

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Bombing Our Way to Vienna

Jonathan Shaw, 17 December 2015

The​ government got the majority that allows it to bomb Islamic State (or Daesh as we are now enjoined to call it) in Syria, but I have rarely listened to a debate in which there was such lack...

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Short Cuts: On the Night Bus to Idomeni

Daniel Trilling, 17 December 2015

Nothing much​ happened on the night bus from Athens to Idomeni. A baby cried, people shuffled in their seats, the driver switched the lights on and told whoever was eating sunflower seeds not...

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Short Cuts: Phished

John Lanchester, 3 December 2015

Got a headache?​ Help is at hand. At your local pharmacy or supermarket or corner shop or garage or indeed pretty much anywhere, you can buy a branded packet of 2-(4-isobutylphenyl)propionic...

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Bland Fanatics: Liberalism and Colonialism

Pankaj Mishra, 3 December 2015

Visiting​ Africa and Asia in the 1960s, Conor Cruise O’Brien discovered that many people in former colonies were ‘sickened by the word “liberalism”’. They saw it...

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The​ National Health Service in England is being dismantled. But you wouldn’t know it from listening to the radio or reading the newspapers. As so often, you have to look beyond the...

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In 1986 Margaret Thatcher arrived at her party's annual conference in Bournemouth with a spring in her step.

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Magical Thinking about Isis

Adam Shatz, 3 December 2015

Today, Paris looks more and more like the Beirut of Western Europe, a city of incendiary ethnic tension, hostage-taking and suicide bombs.

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Loaded Dice: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Thomas Chatterton Williams, 3 December 2015

Between the World and Me is an unrelentingly severe, taut and timely text that's been nearly universally praised.

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Short Cuts: Tax Credits

Martin Loughlin, 19 November 2015

On 26 October​ the House of Lords considered the government’s new tax credit regulations. A motion to reject them was defeated, an unremarkable event, but then the Lords went on to delay...

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Diary: Human Remains 629667

Tom Stevenson, 19 November 2015

More migrants die from thirst and injury in Brooks County than anywhere else in the United States.

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After the Wars: Schäuble’s Realm

Adam Tooze, 19 November 2015

Wolfgang Schäuble​ can’t have expected an easy ride when he moved from Germany’s Interior Ministry to its Finance Ministry on 28 October 2009. Angela Merkel’s new...

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Short Cuts: Climate Change

David Campbell, 5 November 2015

The legal basis​ of international policy on global warming is the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which set the objective of stabilising greenhouse gas emissions at ‘a...

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Too Weak, Too Strong: Russia in Syria

Patrick Cockburn, 5 November 2015

The Russian air strikes that have been taking place since the end of September are strengthening and raising the morale of the Syrian army.

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These people are intolerable: Hitler and Franco

Richard J. Evans, 5 November 2015

On 25 July​ 1936, Hitler spent the evening at Bayreuth, attending a performance of Wagner’s Siegfried. On his way back to his guest quarters at Villa Wahnfried, the Wagner family...

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