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In my own unreliable cultural memory, the age of Hamilton enthusiasm in American life belongs emphatically to Barack Obama’s presidency in its optimistic phase — to the last period of unabashed liberal patriotism and confidence.
In reality, though, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s …
It was supposed to be Keir Starmer’s big gambit: an opportunity to make the political weather, put forward an election-winning economic policy, and slap down “big beast” internal critics. Instead, his long-awaited plan for dealing with the cost-of-living crisis is …
Thirty-three years ago, when I was a teenager in Nairobi, I was a book burner. The year was 1989, the year of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and I was seduced by the rising tide of Islamism. I greeted the …
Britain may be recovering from a heatwave, but its politicians are already fearful that winter is coming. Only now, more than 170 days since the war broke out, are policymakers realising the potentially catastrophic implications of their gung-ho approach towards …
“Jerry Sadowitz is a nasty piece of work. His venomous tirade is relentless, consisting of unabashed racism, homophobia, misogyny, antisemitism, xenophobia, and every other kind of prejudice known to humankind. If it exists, he hates it. The man is a …
Philip K. Dick, whose novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspired the film Blade Runner, did not live to enjoy his Hollywood success. He died on March 2, 1982, three months before the film was released.
In the years …
In the mid-Twenties, the author Ada Harrison visited Majorca and discovered that it had “fallen to Britain”. Majorca had “become one of those places which, the English say, are being ruined by the English”. The result was that the Hotel …
The year was 1989. It was only when Salman Rushdie took his seat at the memorial service that the lethality of his predicament sank in. The remembrance for the writer Bruce Chatwin on Valentine’s Day was held at a Greek …
I keep thinking of the people falling from the sky. The images are seared into my mind: Our Afghan allies, the people we were callously leaving to their fates after 20 years, clinging to an American plane taking off from …
It is now generally agreed that there is something grubby about enjoying paparazzi photographs, especially when the subject has mental health issues. But there appears to be an exception for Ben Affleck. A few years ago, when the actor was …
It’s surely unfair to expect a brilliant scientist to also be a brilliant author. Some of the most valuable books I’ve encountered in my research have been the dreariest to read: repetitive, dense and joyless prose turning what could have …
In the spring of 2021, after writing two books generally butchering Donald Trump, I received an unlikely invitation to visit him at Mar-a-Lago so I could write a third. Negativity was not something he feared. To the extent it added …
Reality comes in degrees, but the law must draw clear lines. English law permits the abortion of healthy foetuses up to 24 weeks after conception — but no later. It also lets you drive on your 17th birthday — but …
Not long after the Trump election I was invited to a dinner party of the sort I’d only recently learned existed. Here’s how it goes. The host is wealthy, as are half the guests, and the other half are intellectuals …
Seifeddine Ferjani was just ten years old when he arrived in the UK. It was 1990, and his family had been forced to flee Tunisia after his father, Said, became close to the opposition figure Rached Ghannouchi. For the next …