Despotic social controls cost lives
Look, I realise you don’t want to read this column. I’m unenthusiastic about writing it. For most of us, any…
Letters
Friends like these… Sir: I much admire Peter Frankopan as a historian but his article ‘Is Putin winning?’ (4 March)…
Please afford me this little gloat
‘Coad. Coad.’ I wracked my brain. Distant bells began to tinkle as I turned the name over. As though performing…
Real life
‘We don’t take cash,’ said the boy behind the counter in Pret after I tried to hand him a £5…
Low life
I can see why rock stars and other impetuous celebrity types accidentally top themselves with drug cocktails. When you are…
Hot stuff
Hector Berlioz dismissed Handel as ‘that tub of pork and beer’ but it wasn’t always like that. Picture a younger,…
Same old story
Back in 1990, Grandpa from The Simpsons wrote a letter of protest to TV-makers. ‘I am disgusted with the way…
Sonic youth
Years ago, I asked Robert Plant what he felt about the world’s love of ‘Stairway to Heaven’. He said he…
Cumbersome muddle
Rupert Goold’s new show, Women, Beware the Devil, has great costumes, sumptuous sets and an intriguing chessboard stage like a…
I may destroy you
One day in October 1966 I came home from school and found a large man stripped to the waist, attacking…
I’ll never trust the Spanish again
Champions is an underdog sports movie starring Woody Harrelson as a baseball coach forced to take on a team with…
Monumental mistakes
Ukraine must stop demolishing its public statues, says Yevheniia Moliar
Sea fever
In March 1675 the Keeper of His Majesty’s Lodgings at Greenwich received an order for ‘Three pairs of shutters for…
The lore of the jungle
The Brazilian journalist Eliane Brum moves from São Paulo to ‘reforest’ herself in the Amazon, and slowly gains the trust of a wary, isolated tribal people
In the fascist grip
A French widower’s horror at his elder son’s involvement with the Front National grows ever deeper as violence escalates
Our man in Agra
After landing in Surat in 1615, Sir Thomas Roe was studiously ignored, and months passed before he was finally received by the Mughal emperor
Dukes of hazard
Whether it was from hurt, spite or genuine fascist sympathies, his surprise at his family’s response simply confirms his stupidity
The crimes of Aunt Suzy
When a midwife in Nagyrév started doling out arsenic in 1911, dozens more women followed suit, until the death toll became impossible to ignore
Pushing the boundaries
New York’s Atelier 17 became a creative hub in the 1940s, where émigré Surrealists shared ideas with artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell
Voyages into the unknown
A marine biologist attempts to explore a newly discovered mid-Atlantic trench, but finds its destructive power both attracts and repels all who approach it
A sister’s quest for justice
Ten women, on average, are killed there every day – and Cristina Rivera Garza’s investigation of her sister’s murder is met with the usual ‘silence of impunity’
