In retrospect, Ted Heath was an odd so-and-so to have become prime minister. Surliness and bachelordom made him an unusual British politico; so did his fervent Europeanism and ambivalence about the supposed ‘special relationship’ with the USA. His interest in China was also an anomaly. It was during his premiership that Britain and China, in […]
Nemonte Nenquimo’s extraordinary book tells the story of her journey from isolated Amazonian community to international activism – extraordinary because it is one of the very few accounts of an indigenous society written by an insider. The Waorani of the rainforests of eastern Ecuador have been famous for a century. Since the 1920s, when they […]
In the months after the 11 September attacks, the Princeton Orientalist Bernard Lewis published a slim bestselling volume asking ‘what went wrong?’ His contentious answer, that the Middle East is intolerant and hamstrung by victimhood, furnished Washington’s neo-con hawks with the theoretical underpinning for their disastrous military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Two decades later, […]
The phrase in the title, ‘A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’, was uttered not by Stalin, who ordered the deportation of some 190,000 Crimean Tatars in May 1944 as a collective punishment for alleged collusion with the Nazi invaders, or by Peter I, who won and lost battles against the Tatars (and who wrote in his […]
Alex Christofi’s Cypria is a remarkable book about a beautiful island that has lain in the path of every Mediterranean storm. The ancients coveted Cyprus for its copper and olive oil. The British, who relinquished Cyprus in 1960, retain their military bases there, along with their antennae in the mountains to eavesdrop on Russian vessels […]
In this excellent and timely book, Sulmaan Wasif Khan unpeels the decades of paranoia and misunderstanding that have led to the current Taiwan imbroglio. He re-examines diplomats’ and national leaders’ choices over the last eighty years, describing how a combination of great events, happenstance and ill-informed decisions has made Taiwan the conflict zone it is […]
Mobility can feel like a modern marvel. We missed it during the pandemic. Now it’s back. Received opinion laments its effects: it exhausts our bodies and the planet. Being mobile still seems so cutting edge, though. Who in past ages could travel so far or so fast? Which generation of yore could see the world […]
In 2014, the financial journalist Clare Hammond left her desk in Hong Kong to fly to Yangon (formerly Rangoon) in Myanmar (formerly Burma) to seek work as an investigative reporter. The suppression of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement was being extensively covered by others. Hammond, British and just twenty-six, sensed that events in Myanmar were […]
In India, the world’s largest election is underway, with almost one billion people eligible to vote. Narendra Modi is expected to win a third term in a row as prime minister. Observers from around the world have raised concerns about a severe decline in democratic standards in India during his rule. Two chief ministers of […]
Speaking in Guatemala during a three-day trip to Central America in June 2021, America’s vice president, Kamala Harris, delivered a stark message to those planning to risk the dangerous journey to the US–Mexican border. ‘Do not come,’ she told them bluntly. ‘Do not come.’ During his tenure as president, Donald Trump called those who’d migrated […]
In my primary school in South Africa, history was taught by rote and through dates that catalogued the stages of the white capture of the country. First up was 1652, when Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape. Next was 1691, when Simon van der Stel was proclaimed governor of Cape Colony. The next two […]
Why would anyone want to destroy a highly successful, freewheeling society? Nobody familiar with the recent history of Hong Kong can avoid that question. After a century and a half of British colonial rule, Hong Kong had achieved a surprisingly high degree of liberty by the late 1990s, a situation made all the more surprising […]
Among the many curious features of American conservatism, one of the oddest is the enthusiasm for European autocrats and strongmen, up to and including Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán. Putin’s fan club includes ex-president Donald Trump, while Orbán is much admired by Ron DeSantis, whose avowed ambition is to turn Florida, of which he is […]
In September last year, the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said he had credible information about Indian state involvement in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian-based campaigner for an independent Sikh state. Nijjar had been shot dead in his pickup truck outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia. ‘Absurd,’ said India in an […]
In the late 1990s a wave of pink methamphetamine pills washed through the illegal drug markets of Southeast Asia. The pills, the journalist Patrick Winn tells us, smelled faintly of vanilla and were stamped with the letters WY. They were a cut above the average meth pill – sturdier and more resistant to flame. When […]
On the evening of 13 December 2003, nine months after the invasion of Iraq, a combat team from the US 4th Infantry Division arrived at a small farmhouse by the River Tigris, north of Baghdad. Soldiers pulled back a mat on a patio to reveal a narrow, chest-deep hole
As someone who has to consume quite a lot of Russian media, I can tell you that if there is one common denominator, it’s that whether we’re talking about a shouty TV news programme (less Newsnight, more a kind of geopolitical Jeremy Kyle Show), a stodgy government newspaper of record or a racy tabloid, no […]
A recurring sketch in the BBC comedy show Goodness Gracious Me, on television a quarter of a century ago now, involves Sanjeev Bhaskar clad in the robes, long hair and long beard that mark out a purveyor of the timeless wisdom of the East. Surrounded by a circle of earnest Western admirers, he spouts repurposed pop-culture […]
The title of this book might lead readers to expect a biographical study of Kim Yo Jong, the 36-year-old sister of Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader. The book in fact offers only the barest of biographical detail, however. In the opening chapter, Sung-Yoon Lee states that the focus of his work will be Kim […]
The sometimes-fraught question ‘Where are you really from?’ raises no eyebrows in Istanbul. As Alexander Christie-Miller points out, almost everyone there is from somewhere else, and long has been. The Roman emperor who founded Constantinople in AD 330 was born in Serbia and proclaimed emperor in York. The Turks who seized the city more than […]
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm