Germany
Driven to extremes
Imagine if Nigel Farage declared that police should be ready to shoot migrants trying to make it from Calais to…
Low life
The hotel reception was lit by three gloomy low-wattage light bulbs. It should have been six but the management was…
Sweden’s shameful cover-up
The truth about the recent mass sex attacks needs to be faced
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, decided to allow ministers to campaign for either side in the referendum on membership…
How the Germans made Glyndebourne
This is hardly the time of year for picnics on the lawn, but I have nevertheless had a week dominated…
Sins of the fathers
This is a documentary in which three men travel across Europe together, but they’re not pleasurably interrailing, even though there…
Christmas markets
Why the fuss about German Christmas markets? Surely they’re just schmaltzy shanty towns, full of stuff you’d never dream of…
Hayek was right: you can’t understand society without evolution
In December the controversial satellite TV channel ReallyTV launches its Christmas season with a flagship reality show called From Homs to…
The Australian example
For many years, Australia has been turning away boats filled with migrants. From a remove, this looks cold–hearted — a…
Germany’s dark night of the soul
The migrant crisis is testing the country’s post-war idea of itself
Hitler’s émigrés
German-speaking refugees dragged British culture into the 20th century. But that didn’t go down well in Stepney or Stevenage, says William Cook
Incomprehensible genius
London’s Goethe-Institut has a two-month season of films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (whose 70th anniversary it’s celebrating), but only five…
The house that Alfred built
This is a book about boundaries — and relationships. At its heart is the eponymous house by the lake, which…
Merkel’s folly
By making them more likely to attempt the perilous journey to Europe, the German chancellor is luring would-be migrants to their deaths
Strauss-ful
Richard Strauss’s Daphne is one of the operas he wrote during the excruciatingly long Indian summer of his composing life,…
The clock that stopped: the victory of nuclear arms and defeat of nuclear power
‘I visited the black marble obelisk which marks the epicentre of the explosion, and I saw the plain domestic wall-clock…
Hamburg
‘What was it like growing up in Liverpool?’ a journalist asked John Lennon. ‘I didn’t grow up in Liverpool,’ he…
A deal for the good of the world, but in Vienna rather than Brussels
As an occasional lecturer on the abstruse topic of the efficacy of sanctions in conflict resolution, I find myself much…
If Merkel shrugs…
Grexit would be worse for Germany than for Greece
Country house opera
I stole a blanket last night. Rather a nice one, in fact. I feel bad about it, of course, but…
Cameron’s friend in Brussels
Hungary’s Viktor Orban could be the PM’s most influential ally in EU renegotiations. So what does he want – and what can he get?
Two batons better
The morning after the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra failed to elect a music director, I took a call from Bild-Zeitung, Berlin’s…
Children of Gomorrah
The carpet-bombing of Hamburg killed 40,000 people. It also did good
The devil’s devoted disciple
It is ironic that this weighty biography of Hitler’s evil genius of a propaganda minister is published on the day…
Letters
Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much…
