plague
Will any lone fanatic soon be capable of bioterrorism?
Building such weapons still demands resources beyond an amateur, but the margin of safety is fast eroding, warns Annie Jacobsen
The history of Moscow was one of extreme violence from the start
The Mongol massacres of 1238 were followed by reigns of terror, plague, fire, revolution and purges – as well as constant hostility to Kyiv
The surreal drama of Helsinki’s history
Henrik Meinander tells the story of a city ravaged by plague, fire, war and occupation being constantly rebuilt and resettled over five centuries
The rat as hero
After adopting two baby rats as pets, Joe Shute slowly overcomes his aversion and learns to appreciate the intelligence of creatures that are really quite like us
A complicated bond
When I think of Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, I picture a pot boiling on a hob, the water level rising…
An empire crumbles
Welcome to Mingheria, ‘pearl of the Levant’. On a spring day, as the 20th century dawns, you disembark at this…
Gone but not forgotten
Take a walk in the English countryside and you get the impression that little has changed. The churches and farmhouses,…
Our great blanket of doubt
Now that the government has kindly allowed us to go out again, I wonder if anyone has discovered the same…
Trouble in store
What just happened? Some 15 months after the pandemic first struck, it’s still horribly unclear, which is perhaps why there…
Apocalypse then
Tragically, the current pandemic lends this sparkling study of London in its most decisive century a grim topicality — for…
La petite mort
The oldest churchyard in Torquay is being used by people openly having sex and sunbathing nude in broad daylight. This…
And end to decent dying
From 22 March 1986: They used to say that war is the ruin of serious soldiering. Too much disorder, too…
Nature fights back
Adrian Woolfson explains the essence of pandemics – and how we can expect many more of them
With an order of cloth the plague arrived
Locked contentedly into the rhythms of farming life and digging for lead on its Derbyshire Peak District slopes, the village…
Grief fills the room up
Maggie O’Farrell is much possessed by death. Her first novel, After You’d Gone (2000), chronicled the inner life of a…
Closing time
War and plague have menaced theatres before, but rarely on this scale, says Lloyd Evans
Born to be wild
Where to turn in anxious and febrile times? One answer is to nature, or the ‘non-human living world’, which, despite…
Consider the costs
Less than 24 hours after California governor Gavin Newsom closed ‘non-essential’ businesses and ordered Californians to stay inside to avoid…
The Old Vic’s Sylvia may be the new Les Mis
Sylvia, the Old Vic’s musical about the Pankhurst clan, has had a troubled nativity. Illness struck the cast during rehearsals.…
The real reason for the fall of Rome? Climate change
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? It’s a question that’s been puzzling writers ever since Edward Gibbon wrote The History…
Love rats
Paris A rat’s not called a rat for nothing, and — as we are repeatedly told — we are never…
A jaunty romp of rape and pillage
The Brethren, by Robert Merle, who died at the age of 95 ten years ago, was originally published in 1977,…
