Syria
Only Radio 4 would allow Ian McKellan and Joanna Lumley to play Mr and Mrs God
One sphere that podcasts have so far not much penetrated is drama. Audible.co.uk is itching to develop its own brand…
Portrait of the Week: Allied air strikes on Syria and the Windrush scandal
Home Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, apologised in Parliament for the treatment of immigrants from the Commonwealth from before 1971,…
Bombs away: Trump and Macron’s bromance is getting serious
Remember the never-ending handshake? It was 14 July 2017, Bastille Day, and Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump opened their formal…
From a Low and Quiet Sea: making art from a perilous journey
Donal Ryan is one of the most notable Irish writers to emerge this decade. So far he has produced five…
A day of reckoning is coming for America’s muddled Middle East policies
Beirut ‘If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense,’ said Alice. ‘Nothing would be what it…
How can any intelligent person have faith?
Ten years ago, I had a strange debate about faith with a famous Jesuit and an agnostic psychoanalyst in a…
Britain and its allies are opening the way for yet another Iraq war
After the most intensive street-by-street combat since 1945, Isis’s so-called caliphate is no more. Last weekend, the Iraqi government won…
Putin the peacemaker
When Russia entered the Syrian civil war in September 2015 the then US secretary of defense, Ash Carter, predicted catastrophe…
Seeing the light
‘You can’t lie… on radio,’ says Liza Tarbuck. The Radio 2 DJ was being interviewed for the network’s birthday portrait,…
Straight to hell
No, The State (Channel 4) wasn’t a recruiting manual for the Islamic State, though I did feel uneasy about it…
The many sides of satire
Brexit the Musical is a peppy satire written by Chris Bryant (not the MP, he’s a lawyer). Musically the show…
Dark night of the soul
As bombs fall everywhere in Syria and IS fighters destroy Palmyra, a musicologist in Vienna lies awake all night thinking…
Turkey’s triumph
President Erdogan has the EU’s leaders exactly where he wants them
Trapped in hell
The mechanic, blinded in one eye by shrapnel, spent three days searching for his family in the destroyed buildings and…
Crossing continents
Could radio, and in particular a weekly soap, have a role to play in the Syrian crisis? You might think,…
High life
On 17 November 1813, Marshal Ney, the bravest of the brave, had been the last to march out of Smolensk…
Home and away
Four programmes, four very different kinds of radio, from a classically made drama to weird sonic ramblings, via the best…
Turkey’s blackmail
Looked at from the narrow perspective of how to deal with the lethal business of human trafficking across the Aegean,…
Portrait of the week
Home The Bank of England arranged for banks to be able to borrow as much money as they needed around…
Portrait of the week
Home An official analysis by the Cabinet Office said that if Britain left the EU it would lead to a…
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, having continued talks through the night in Brussels, announced that he had achieved a ‘special status’ for…
The trouble with the Kurds
Western powers’ favourite allies in Iraq and Syria have problems – and divisions – of their own
Farty, smelly and in love with Putin? You must be getting middle-aged
There are things that happen when you grow older — bad things, harbingers of death and decay. Past the age of…
Putin’s great game
In Syria, the Russian leader is on the verge of his biggest – and riskiest – coup yet
High life
Gstaad The locals here in the beautiful Saanen valley are split over the migrant crisis. Switzerland does not belong…
