March 2024, Issue 527 Michael Prodger on Gauguin * Piers Brendon on the discovery of dinosaurs * Philip Snow on Japan's war trials * Mark Galeotti on Zelensky's rise * Rory McCarthy on Saddam Hussein's blunders * Norma Clarke on Barbara Comyns * David Bromwich on Enlightenment disillusionment * Peter Moore on shipwrecks * Julian Baggini on the price of life * Graham Daseler on Kubrick * Owen Bennett-Jones on Indian democracy * Adam Brookes on Myanmar's meth industry * Zareer Masani on Queen Victoria's PMs * Costica Bradatan on false messiahs * Sharman Kadish on London fashion * Jonathan Rée on Wittgenstein * William Whyte on London architecture * James Cahill on Edouard Louis * Allan Massie on Paul Theroux * and much, much more and much, much more…
The Current Issue
Michael Prodger
Trouble in Paradise: Gauguin & Polynesia
In 1891, Paul Gauguin arrived in Tahiti on board the Vire and, according to one witness, stepped ashore wearing a cowboy hat and un grand air de profond dédain. He could ill afford such disdain: he had long desired to live and work among the local people in the tropics but they hooted with laughter at the sight of him. Particularly amused by his long salt-and-pepper hair, they followed him in the street, calling him ta’ata vahine (‘man-woman’). It was not the entrance the painter had intended to make. The voyage to Tahiti was not Gauguin’s first attempt at freeing himself from ‘everything that is artificial and conventional’. In 1887 he spent some time in Panama, where a shortage of funds – a recurring... read more
More Articles from this Issue
Philip Snow
Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
By Gary J Bass
In January 1649, shortly after his defeat by Parliament, King Charles I of England was brought before the High Court of Justice, a new-fangled tribunal established by the victors, to answer the novel charge of making war on his own people. It was probably the world’s first recognisable war crimes trial. Apprised of ... read more
Rory Mccarthy
The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979–2003
By Steve Coll
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... read more
Julian Baggini
The Price of Life: In Search of What We’re Worth and Who Decides
By Jenny Kleeman
Attaching a price to a human life is the height of poor taste. It obscures the distinction between two very different kinds of value – the monetary and the existential. However, there are situations in which one can, should or even must set aside any thought of the sanctity of human life and make cold, hard calculations... read more
Norma Clarke
Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence
By Avril Horner
Barbara Comyns (1907–92) was a true original. The word ‘unique’ was often applied to her writing, along with ‘bizarre’, ‘comic’ and ‘macabre’. Her characteristic tone of faux-naïf innocence was established in her first novel, Sisters by a River (1947), which, as the Chicago Tribune observed in 2015, mixed ‘dispassion, levity and veiled ferocity’. Her friend... read more
Piers Brendon
Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion
By Michael Taylor
God created the world, according to the Bible-based calculations of the 17th-century Irish archbishop James Ussher, on the night of 22 October 4004 BC. Over six days, he populated it with flora, fish, fowl and beasts, finally making man in his own image. This cosmogony did not... read more
James Wham
Dune: Part Two
By Denis Villeneuve (dir)
The great superpower of Dune is its prescience. In 1959, Frank Herbert walked the sand dunes of Florence, Oregon, and saw the future: aridity and riches, sand and spice. Strong coastal winds were pushing the dunes east, towards the city, and the US Department of Agriculture decided to intervene, planting sedge and beach grass to halt the sand’s advance. This battle for the environment... read more
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Are iPhones ruining children's lives? A prominent American psychologist thinks so.
@tiffanyjenkins is not so sure:
Tiffany Jenkins - The Smartphone Pandemic
Tiffany Jenkins: The Smartphone Pandemic - The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an...
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India's 'festival of democracy', or general election, begins next month. Like every good festival, it looks likely to have its fair share of murders and arrests.
@OwenBennettJon probes the state of democracy in India:
Owen Bennett-Jones - New Delhi Confidential
Owen Bennett-Jones: New Delhi Confidential - The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India by Alpa Shah
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Where is the world's newest narcostate and why is it thriving?
@AdamBrookesWord investigates Asia's meth mecca.
Adam Brookes - Meth Comes to Myanmar
Adam Brookes: Meth Comes to Myanmar - Narcotopia: In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel That Outwitted the CIA by Patrick Winn
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