How should we understand Britain’s colonial and imperial history? The 200th anniversary, this week, of the fictional birth of the great imperial anti-hero, Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC, is a timely way into the contested politics of historical memory. His …
The loneliest Russian in the world
No one in Washington will speak to him. His phone calls go unanswered, and he can’t get meetings. Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, is the most isolated man in the American capital.
When an interview with Antonov containing …
Mental illness doesn’t make you special
Marianne Eloise wants the world to know that she does not “have a regular brain at all”. That’s her declaration, on the very first page of her new memoir, Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking. The book catalogues her experience of a …
Oxford University didn’t cause Brexit
It happens every Thursday during term time. To the side of St Michael’s street, arched neo-gothic buildings. A dingy bar, a library which never has enough plugs, and a crenelated debating hall. That’s the Oxford Union. It is, apparently, the …
Putin’s plot to paralyse the EU
“It’s much worse than everyone thinks.” Alan Riley is drinking tea on the outside patio of the Radisson hotel in central Chișinău, the capital of Moldova. “The recent winter energy crisis was exceptional. And we now realise that it was …
How the Ukraine war must end
On August 20, 1968, I happened to be in Prague when Czechoslovakia was simultaneously invaded from East Germany, Hungary, Poland and western Ukraine by more than 800,000 Warsaw Pact troops making any resistance futile. By contrast, on February 23 this …
Why Macron is invincible
The crowd that gathered last night on the Champ-de-Mars, underneath the Eiffel Tower, to celebrate Emmanuel Macron’s re-election as President were waving flags — not all of them French. Half of the guests held aloft the blue-and-yellow banner of the …
The city stopping the fall of south Ukraine
Mykolaiv, Ukraine
The lady burrows into the earth. Swathed in blue plastic to protect her against the rain, she pats the soil and digs into it with her hands. She won’t speak to me, but allows me to watch as …
France’s gerontocratic nightmare
The results of the first round of the 2022 French presidential elections give a surprising impression of order. Three poles, each with its own fairly simple socio-demographic and geographical structure, seem to emerge: the Macron vote, the Le Pen vote …
Do we need Caesar Elon Musk?
In 1515, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull stipulating that all published material translated from Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Chaldaic into Latin, or from Latin into the vernacular, should be moderated by sensitivity readers. Without such precautions, the document …
No woman is safe on Twitter
When the journalist Leta Hong Fincher wrote about forced marriages in Xinjiang, she was bombarded with online abuse for weeks. Games designer Brianna Wu was driven from her home during an online campaign against sexism in her industry. The account …
Passover in war-torn Odessa
Odessa, Ukraine
The soldier leans through the car window and stares at me. He has the guileless but wary eyes of a child; he can’t be much more than 18. I’ve just crossed the border from Moldova into Ukraine and …
Vladislav Surkov leaves the stage
Vladislav Surkov knows that no one goes to see puppet shows anymore. But for more than 20 years, the self-confessed ‘author’ of the Putin system built a career on the idea that puppet-masters can still attract an audience. Swirling rumours …
How the Guardian enables Owen Jones
One of the greatest moments of my life was when I stood up to Susan Cuthbert. She ran our school playground and, yes, that is her actual name. (So sue me, Susan.) Every lunchtime, Susan assigned us a role to …
JK Rowling and the lunch of secrets
It may have come to your attention over the last few days that there was a lunch. The events of that afternoon have already been covered in detail, and the joyous photographic record shared widely, so I will instead focus …