Piddington’s very English revolution
At a packed village hall meeting in picturesque Piddington, parish council leader Tim McNally railed against the British state. “The Government has stacked all of…
MAGA’s Latin-American crime thriller
It was an episode straight out of a hit narconovela (the subgenre of Latin-American telenovelas that feature gangland violence in addition to the usual raunchy romance). Nadia, an expectant mother,…
Who owns the Bayeux Tapestry?
It is remarkable that two of France’s most precious national treasures are not French. The Mona Lisa arrived in France with Leonardo da Vinci in 1516, and has remained there…
Who owns Meghan Markle?
As the King definitively rules out a return to The Firm, Meghan Markle must be more urgently contemplating a return to acting. Cynics might suggest that she never left it.…
Meet the GoFundMe grifters
In Polk County, Georgia, there lived a one-year-old miniature donkey called HeeHaw. He had been raised and bottle-fed by his owner, a woman called Hannah Israel. In the early hours…
America is still fighting the wrong war
The al-Qaeda attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon constituted one of the great head fakes of history. As on the sporting field, when…
How to save writing from AI
On Sunday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced that artificial general intelligence — a computer that can cogitate like the human mind — is already here with OpenAI’s Astra model. If…
Who owns the Bayeux Tapestry?
It is remarkable that two of France’s most precious national treasures are not French. The Mona Lisa arrived in France with Leonardo da Vinci in 1516, and has remained there…
Inside Afghanistan’s terror schools
A few months ago, Manizha’s eight-year-old son came to her with a question. “What,” he asked, “is jihad?” His words left Manizha speechless — especially when the former Kabul office…
The next financial crash: a scenario
There are two mistakes you can make with predictions: claiming that something will happen when it won’t, or that it won’t happen when it will. The economist Paul Samuelson joked…
Reform’s struggle to be serious
“This James thing is fucked,” were the first words I heard on the train. It was the 8:10 to Birmingham International, and a clutch of young men wearing blue suits,…