France is, of all European countries, the most difficult for any foreigner to write about. Its intractability is a function, in the first instance, of the immense output on their society produced...
In March 2002 I attended one of the regular Foreign and Commonwealth Office meetings on nuclear non-proliferation. We were told by a senior official that Iraq had reassembled its nuclear...
The fate of a Slovene Communist revolutionary serves as a perfect metaphor for the twists of Stalinism. In 1943, when Italy capitulated, he led a rebellion of Yugoslav prisoners in a...
The old lady in the Sunday hat was telling her grandson the day was too hot for sale or rent. And just as she said this and wiped the backs of her hands with a Wet Wipe, a dog came padding down...
Not since the belle époque of Sartrean existentialism have we had a better reason to stop and ask ourselves what it is exactly to ‘act in good faith’. For that is what the prime...
Darfur’s landscapes have a cruel beauty, and few are more unyielding than the nomadic encampment of Aamo. It is in a stony wasteland on a plain ringed by mountains formed from ancient...
It is tempting to see the so-called handover of power from the US to the Iraqi interim government on 28 June as a fake. The few who attended the ceremony at which sovereignty was legally...
What should we mean by ‘Reformation’? Was it a ‘paradigm shift’ of the kind proposed by Thomas Kuhn, a new set of answers to old questions, a Darwinian moment? Perhaps....
John Lloyd, currently the editor of the Financial Times Magazine, resigned as associate editor of the New Statesman in April 2003. His reasons for leaving were published in a ‘farewell...
The pundits say that the Indian electorate does not cast votes, but votes castes. This is generally true but at key moments in its postcolonial history, the citizens of the world’s largest...
The newsagent at the end of my lane in Shanghai always sold out of Nanfang Zhoumo (‘Southern Weekend’) within hours. For those reporting on China, this famous – and to the...
When Susan Pedersen writes that Eleanor Rathbone was the most significant woman in British politics in the first half of the 20th century she might have added that another Somerville alumna,...
Whether or not the prime minister was cheered to the rafters at the first meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party after the local/European elections I do not know. That he was allowed an easy...
Head north from San Francisco on Highway 101, across the Golden Gate Bridge. If you leave the downtown area at around 7.30 in the morning, even with sea fog moving in, you’ll make it to...
When I left school I went to work for Jesus – preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming release to the captive, testifying, as With great power the apostles gave witness to the...
In some ways, millennium absurdity has not yet ended. Although the Dome reached oblivion in record time, a deeper dimension of fever, wild surmise and unhinged ‘radicalism’ has...
In a crowded restaurant a bottle of wine arrives at our table with a note: ‘Por tratar de juzgar a Pinochet y hacer justicia en nuestro país’ – ‘For your efforts to...
Few elections have offered such last-minute drama as Taiwan’s presidential election in March, though whether the drama was a near tragedy, as followers of the victor believe, or a comedy,...