Not since World War Two has the nature and adequacy of international law provoked such a debate, both in Britain and abroad. A great number of international agreements have been adopted over the...
I have always liked hanging around courtrooms. In the Crown Court in Oxford in the late 1970s, I happened on the trial of a racist agitator, who had festooned the streets of Leamington Spa with...
The last time I wrote for the LRB, I mentioned a speech made by Tim Collins, the then shadow education secretary, calling for a review of the teaching of history in schools. ‘Nothing is...
The history of the American and British intervention in Iraq has been littered with spurious turning points over the last three years. The latest is the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the best...
Fixing a football match is a risky business. Players can be bribed, but things can go wrong when thousands of fans are watching. The alternative is to offer the referee a backhander. A German...
In early June, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip (and the Golan Heights) entered its 40th year.* The Palestinians who inhabit these territories have lived...
Wherever you look in Grozny there are gaping shell-holes in the walls, crumbling balconies, empty window frames, and doors so pockmarked by bullets that you can see right through them. When I...
It has been raining in Tehran for a couple of days and for once the sky isn’t grey with pollution. My early morning ritual begins: I walk the short distance to the taxi rank, install myself...
It is time for the West to develop a new policy on nuclear proliferation. The highly partisan Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, which allowed only the US, Russia, Britain, France and...
The moment of revelation is a little different for every person who experiences it. For Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, the road to Damascus came in the form of a pair of knickers. At the time...
I am old enough to remember listening to the results of the general election of 1945 and sensing the surprise at the size of Attlee’s majority shared by Conservative and Labour supporters...
The events of 11 September 2001 killed thousands, left many thousands more bereft, and horrified countless millions who merely bore witness. But for a few, 9/11 suggested an opportunity. In the...
On 20 May, in a stuffy hall inside Baghdad’s Green Zone, behind the seven lines of sandbagged checkpoints, razor wire and sniffer dogs that protect it from the streets beyond, a new Iraqi...
When Moazzam Begg was kidnapped by the American government and its Pakistani foederati on 31 January 2002 – ‘kidnapped’ appears to be the appropriate legal term to use of...
For many observers, the storm unleashed in March by the adoption of the Contrat Première Embauche, or ‘first job contract’, was evidence of a sickness peculiar to France, and...
What is the only place in England the joke went, where you can buy three cemeteries and a pint of beer and still have change from a pound? Answer: the London Borough of Westminster. Boom boom....
If the prime minister hoped to deflect attention from the local election results by a well-timed reshuffle he has certainly succeeded. Much was thought to hang on the election results and they...
In the early afternoon of Monday, 8 May, a sealed A4 envelope was delivered by the Iranian Foreign Ministry to the Swiss Embassy in Tehran. The wire agencies were told that it contained a letter...