Germany is Europe’s paymaster. Even Franco-German summits are now really ‘German-German summits’, Romano Prodi said recently. But is Germany also becoming Europe’s...
‘They’re not going to stop,’ Joe McCarthy said of the Communists. ‘It’s right here with us now. Unless we make sure there’s no infiltration of our government,...
The new headquarters of the African Union have been built on the site of Addis Ababa’s former central prison, officially called Akaki, but known in Ethiopia as Alem Bekagn, or...
How did Bill Gates become the richest man in America? His wealth has nothing to do with Microsoft producing good software at lower prices than its competitors, or ‘exploiting’ its...
How to characterise the Putin regime, a now shaken and besieged ruling group sometimes said to be the richest in the history of the world? ‘Soft authoritarianism’, ‘hybrid...
The recent Brussels summit to save the euro was a strange affair, and not just because of the quixotic behaviour of the British delegation. It was presided over by two politicians who were giving...
The awakening is not over, but the heady days of the Arab Spring have come to an end. The counter-revolution, Régis Debray once observed, is revolutionised by the revolution. And so it has...
In a few weeks the Supreme Court of Senegal will reach a decision in the case of Abdoulaye Wade. At issue is whether the 85-year-old president, first elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2007, will...
No essay in English has a better title than De Quincey’s ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’. I wonder whether, if he were alive today, he might be tempted to go back...
We are all deeply anxious about the future of British universities. Our list of concerns is a long one. It includes the discontinuance of free university education; the withdrawal of direct public...
Young women, the state and public order in Britain, as seen in clippings from the newspapers, August 2011: Natasha Reid, 24, pleaded guilty to stealing a television from a Comet in North London...
A couple of markers may help. We are all situated somewhere, even if we see ourselves as cosmopolitans emancipated from mere biography. I was a beneficiary of the old idealistic British system, a...
For a long time I believed that being an academic wasn’t just the best career for me – which it clearly was, I loved it – but one of the best it was possible to have, especially...
Athens, 9 November. Voula is a smart district of Athens for rich citizens who want to live by the sea. Sleek white apartment blocks with big balconies face the Aegean, which undulates like a lake...
On 12 November a blast ripped through the Alghadir missile base, 25 miles south-west of Tehran. Among the 17 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard killed was Brigadier General Hassan...
George Clooney’s The Ides of March is a slow and modest political drama that often feels like a faster and better thriller. There’s no crime, just misbehaviour and deals and dangerous...
A couple of decades ago I was having lunch with Imran Khan at an Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge. He was preoccupied with his approaching retirement from cricket. ‘People like...
The misfortunes suffered by Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte on 20 October unfolded in a succession of confused online updates. A report of his capture in a firefight rapidly mutated into claims that...