For two decades Roman Abramovich embodied the ambiguity and vulgarity of London’s ties with the Russian élite. In a sense, he was Vladmir Putin’s unofficial, silent, constant ambassador to the city. The one Russian other than the President that anybody …
The failure of Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac, who would have been 100 tomorrow, was the sort of male literary celebrity America doesn’t produce anymore. Shy and sensitive, ambitious to the point of megalomania (he often likened himself to Melville and Shakespeare), and an outrageous drunk, …
How Buffy revamped teen sex
American teenagers were forced to confront a very particular existential terror in 1997. It wasn’t your usual horror film, even though it did star Freddie Prinze, Jr. In Too Soon for Jeff he plays a high school senior who gets …
Putin is perverting Jewish history
I never met my wife’s grandmother, Luba, but she is apparently her double. Born just outside Lviv into a wealthy family, she was 18 when the Nazis invaded in 1941. Within months, both of Luba’s parents had been rounded up …
America has won Europe’s war
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western leaders have gone out of their way to condemn Putin and express their solidarity with the victims of the conflict. And yet, one cannot help but suspect that behind closed doors they are raising …
The taboo trans question
“Sexuality is who you go to bed with, gender is who you go to bed as.” Learn it, remember it, drill it into your brain: this is one of the most important precepts of gender identity activism, and one of …
How Russia’s elite bought Biarritz
“Slava Ukraina”. Glory to Ukraine. So reads an anti-war graffito sprayed on a wall. But not any old wall. It daubs the gateway of Villa Suzanna, avenue des Dunes, outside Biarritz. An extravagant 1927 Art Deco residence facing the Atlantic …
Is this Ukraine’s last chance for peace?
Nearly two weeks into the invasion of Ukraine, observing from a distance, it still feels as if there are two different wars, which barely overlap, taking place.
The first is the war on social media: in this war, a combination …
The cowardice of the far Left
The far Left exposed itself this week in a series of meetings and rallies and encounters about Ukraine, for a tyrant bombing civilians will get a fair hearing from them if he is not a member of Nato.
Putin needs …
How anti-racism can make you rich
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”. These wise words can be found in any number of Instagram statuses, attributed to any number of people who didn’t say them. How would …
Putin has saved Boris Johnson
Saving Boris Johnson probably wasn’t on Putin’s list of strategic objectives. Nevertheless, that is what his invasion of Ukraine has achieved.
Just two weeks ago, Johnson’s approval ratings were cratering. On February 21, Redfield and Wilton put the net figure …
How Ukrainian women will suffer
Suddenly, images of Ukrainian women are all over the internet. Most of them are mothers, fleeing Russian convoys, carrying their children across borders. Many of them are leaving husbands and brothers behind to fight. But these heart-wrenching photographs, published by …
Escaping American tribalism
One summer afternoon when I was 23 — this was in 1987 — I was twiddling the dial on the radio in the apartment I was subletting on 114th St. when I stumbled on a station that was unlike anything …
Is the media still stifling the lab-leak theory?
Last autumn, American intelligence agencies reported to the White House that they remain divided on whether the pandemic started naturally or was the result of a lab accident. “All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an …
Putin’s toxic masculinity
Of all the ill-informed explanations for why Vladimir Putin has invaded Ukraine, perhaps the most absurd is that he is afflicted with “toxic masculinity”. And yet, there are multiple commentators and think piece writers saying exactly that: the Russian President …