Nelson Mandela

Elizabeth II’s devotion to the Commonwealth

17 September 2022 9:00 am

The Queen’s devotion to the Commonwealth

Homage to Sydney Kentridge, South Africa’s courtroom giant

30 July 2022 9:00 am

Sydney Kentridge, the protagonist of Thomas Grant’s superb legal saga The Mandela Brief, is that trickiest of biographical subjects: a…

When it comes to Africa, the media look away

20 November 2021 9:00 am

Kenya Each time I sit in St Bride’s on Fleet Street during the memorial of another friend, I look around…

What's behind the South African riots?

15 July 2021 8:59 am

South Africa is ablaze once more. In the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal (formerly Natal) and Gauteng (which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria),…

joe biden

Joe Biden’s broken record

12 May 2020 7:40 am

‘Get your words straight, Jack!’ As Joe Biden campaigns for the Oval Office, the 77-year-old frequently recounts his five decades…

Theodore Roosevelt campaigning in the summer of 1912

Words to rally and inspire: stirring speeches from Elizabeth I to the present

15 December 2018 9:00 am

It was a surprise, on reading Speeches of Note, to find myself laughing and chuckling at the speech of a…

In praise of braindead filth

8 July 2017 9:00 am

Melvyn Bragg on TV: The Box That Changed The World (BBC2, Saturday) was just what you would have expected of…

Aung San Suu Kyi with military officials at the swearing-in of President Htin Kyaw, 30 March 2016

Has Aung San Suu Kyi become a puppet of Burma’s generals?

9 April 2016 9:00 am

Peter Popham is commendably quick off the blocks with this excellent account of the run-up to last November’s Burmese general…

South Africa’s Heart of Darkness

2 April 2016 9:00 am

Trencherman was first published in Afrikaans in 2006 and translated into English for a South African readership shortly afterwards, but…

Assisted suicide is too close to murder to be legal

19 July 2014 9:00 am

How amazing to have two former Anglican archbishops, George Carey of Canterbury and Desmond Tutu of South Africa, supporting Lord…

What a lost prison manuscript reveals about the real Nelson Mandela

18 January 2014 9:00 am

His long-lost prison manuscript sheds new light on the president’s politics, smoothed over in ‘Long Walk to Freedom’

Rod Liddle: Try my new year resolution - ignore the internet

4 January 2014 9:00 am

At last, it has been scientifically proved that Jesus Christ is better than Muhammad. We’d always known that our lad…

The world’s media are waiting for Mandela to die. Here’s why he’s disappointing them

6 July 2013 9:00 am

The past few weeks have been an agonising dress rehearsal for the great statesman’s death