Britain shaped the modern Middle East through the lines that it drew in the sand after the First World War and through the League of Nations mandates over the fledgling states that followed. Forty years later the Suez crisis dealt a fatal blow to Britain’s standing in the Middle East and is often represented as…
Geetanjali Shree ( Geetanjali Pandey) was born in Manipuri Uttarpradesh, India, and her translator, Daisy Rockwell, the author of Tomb of Sand which scooped this year’s International Booker Prize the first time a work in Hindi had ever won, then one of India’s biggest dairy brands accorded them the highest accolade, a cartoon rendition of…
One of our surprising and greatest, French and international writers, Emmanuel Carrere’s Yoga begins, Carrere embarking on a rigorous 10-day meditative Vipassana Yoga retreat in rural France in search of clarity and material for his next book, without his mobile phone, as contact with the outside world is forbidden, along with books, pens and other…
Geoff Dyer, a 63-year-old Briton, sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes, and musicians who’ve mattered to him throughout his life. Dyer examines with playful charm and penetrating intelligence, Friedrich Nietzsche’s breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan’s reinventions of old songs, English painter, JMW…
Ariel Pryce wakes up in Lisbon, alone, as her husband is gone- no warning, no note, note answering his phone, something is wrong. She starts with hotel security, then the police, then the American Embassy, at each confronting question she can’t fully answer what exactly is John doing in Lisbon? Why would he drag her…
English Heritage has over 400 historic monuments including buildings, places from world-famous prehistoric sites to grand medieval castles and Roman forts but not British concrete buildings that seek to rehabilitate as much-maligned architectural style. Concrete is coming back to fashion, as Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre was voted Britain’s most-hated building. Architect and historian at…
Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Cameron, George Osborn, Theresa May, Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan, and Jacob Rees-Mogg are all not just colleagues, but they are peers, rivals, and friends and they walked out of the world of student debates onto the national stage, they brought their university politics with them. These smirking Oxonians think that…
India speaks, writes, and thinks in many tongues with more than 400 listed languages, including English, spoken by more than a million native speakers, and some languages like Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Telugu are nearly 4, 500 years old. Indian poets who wrote in English, a language that arrived in the 17th century, joined others…
David Lieven’s In the shadow of Gods looks into the history of empires from Mughal to British and questions what made them the dominant form of government for several centuries. When the empires disintegrate statutes fall or are defaced with paint, and names of towns and universities are changed to eliminate imperial references. David Lieven…
In Jerusalem, what you see and what is true are two different things, as maps divide the walled Old City into four quarters, yet the division doesn’t reflect the reality of mixed and diverse neighborhoods. Beyond the crush and frenzy of its major religious sites, much of the Old City remains little known to visitors,…