China
Sorry, but I can’t join in the China panic (especially not while I’m on a cruise)
MS Queen Victoria, 38°N 19°E I’ll do my best, but I’ve got to be honest: being surrounded by shining Ionian…
Chairman Mao: monster of misrule
Mao Zedong, once the Helmsman, Great Teacher and Red Red Sun in Our Hearts, and still the Chairman, died in…
Ai Weiwei: the perfect Asian artist for lazy western curators
In September, the Royal Academy of Arts will present a solo exhibition of works by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.…
Portrait of the week
Home The Metropolitan Police encouraged people to celebrate VJ Day despite reports in the Mail on Sunday (picked up from…
Forget Greece: China's economic slowdown is the biggest story of the year
China’s long boom may finally be ending. The consequences for the world will be profound
The madness of the Beijing Winter Olympics
Jumping the shark isn’t yet an Olympic sport, but if it were the International Olympic Committee would be a shoo-in…
The story of Sikkim’s last king and queen reads like a fairy tale gone wrong
Sikkim was a Himalayan kingdom a third of the size of Wales squeezed between China, India, Nepal and Bhutan. I…
Joanna Lumley is ‘thrilled’ by everything, even being spanked by a Mongolian shaman, in her new Trans-Siberian Adventure
For keen students of China, this week’s television provided yet more proof that Deng Xiaoping’s decision to open the country…
Was Genghis Khan the cruellest man who ever lived?
From the unpromising and desperately unforgiving background that forged his iron will and boundless ambition, Temujin (as Genghis Khan was…
The long shadow over China’s only children
This book starts with a Chinese boy so privileged and pampered that, at 21, he can’t open his own suitcase,…
New ways to destroy the world
Despite the offer of joy proposed in the subtitle, this is a deeply troubling book by one of Britain’s foremost…
Amazing. Thatcherite propaganda at the Young Vic
St James Theatre hosts a new play about Alexander McQueen (real name Lee), whose star flashed briefly across the fashion…
Letter from Kathmandu: China's beating India in the aid wars
After the first earthquake we were told that the chance of another one was 200 to 1. A fortnight later,…
Why American psychoanalysts are an endangered species
America’s psychoanalysts are becoming an endangered species
Whose hair are you buying?
British people buy £43 million worth of human hair a year. So who’s selling?
Carl Jung meets David Icke (and writes a book of bonkers business-speak)
What do you get if you cross renegade psychoanalyst Carl Jung with lizard-men conspiracist David Icke? It is a question…
Luxury isn’t the opposite of poverty but the opposite of vulgarity - but don’t tell the V&A
Different concepts of luxury may be inferred from a comparison of the wedding feast of Charles Bovary and Emma Rouault…
From diplomacy to disillusion with the Dalai Lama’s big brother
Can there ever have been another book in which one of the authors (Anne Thurston in this case) so effectively…
How Labour’s 50p tax trick has ended up helping George Osborne
Last week’s public borrowing and tax-receipt figures, headlined ‘Chancellor hails biggest monthly surplus in seven years’, received considerably less attention…
What’s good about austerity (whatever the Greeks think)
The only question I remember from my Oxford moral philosophy paper was ‘What is integrity and is it a virtue?’…
The real mystery is how it got published
As a boy I spent quite a lot of my free time trying to fake up ancient-looking documents. This hopeless…
The eurozone is strong enough to kick out Greece if Syriza wins
Ever since European Central Bank president Mario Draghi declared himself ready, in July 2012, ‘to do whatever it takes to…
Portrait of the week
Home The government, expecting a backbench rebellion over the European Arrest Warrant, did not present it for a separate vote…
Peter Phillips is mugged by a gang of Praetorius-loving six-year-old girls in China
We have read about the remarkable opening up of China in recent years: how many people live there and how…
Why the real winner from George Osborne’s ‘Google tax’ could be Nigel Farage
George Osborne’s promise to crack down on multinational companies’ avoidance of UK taxes by the use of impenetrable devices such…
