Midway through the 2003 invasion, an American officer was shown on TV directing tank crews away from the site of Babylon, explaining to them that it was an important part of Iraq’s...
Israel’s siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last...
On 16 December, ten days into the unrest in Greece sparked by the killing of a 15-year-old boy by the police, a group of Greek students occupied the National Broadcasting Network. Interrupting a...
In 2004, the Israeli army began building a dummy Arab city in the Negev desert. It’s the size of a real city, with streets (all of them given names), mosques, public buildings and cars....
On 27 November the Iraqi parliament voted by a large majority in favour of a security agreement with the US under which its 150,000 troops will withdraw from Iraqi cities, towns and villages by...
At five o’clock in the morning on 21 September 1809, two men set out from London in two carriages and headed for Putney Heath. They brought two seconds, two sets of pistols, two hatreds and...
Annabel Patterson’s passion and sense of justice were inbred, but her belief in what was possible and the drive to achieve it were acquired, learned at a time when women like her were sent...
On the way to the frontier, we stopped the car for a last look at Abkhazia. A new monument stood by the road, the effigy of a scowling, whiskered Abkhaz chieftain with sword and shield. The...
You could walk around Mayfair all day and not notice them. Hedge funds don’t – can’t – advertise. The most you’ll see is a discreet nameplate or two. An address in...
It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert Mugabe. Liberal and conservative commentators alike portray him as a brutal dictator, and blame him for Zimbabwe’s...
In opposition, Harold Wilson spoke out against American involvement in Vietnam. In May 1954, during his Bevanite phase, he declared that ‘not a man, not a gun, must be sent from this...
The financial crisis – or, as we like to call it here, ‘the effects of the American and European financial crisis on Russia’ – has taken a little while to get going, but...
Last April, the Icelandic government published a report on the country’s image written by a committee of its leading businessmen. It summarises Iceland’s history thus: ‘For a...
South Africa is midway through a political revolution attended by many uncertainties, but it is already clear that the African National Congress, which has ruled the country since 1994, will...
Noam Chomsky called for people to vote for Obama ‘without illusions’. I fully share Chomsky’s doubts about the real consequences of Obama’s victory: from a pragmatic...
American officials – without any trace of irony – label Iran as militaristic, aggressive, expansionist, interventionist, even as hegemonic and imperialistic. The media often echo...
James Cuno is currently the director of the Art Institute of Chicago. He used to be the director of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London; before that he was the director of the Harvard...
Few areas of the humanities have undergone such a remarkable transformation over the past half-century as the history of political thought. Students were once introduced to it by way of its...