The polish Model
When President Bush landed here yesterday, he found himself in a completely different city from the one his father visited as president in 1989. Back then, Warsaw was still run by communist bureaucrats.
The Forgotten Famine
Three guesses which country the United Nations now reckons to contain the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. No, not Somalia; not Rwanda; not Mozambique.
Who Elected the Anti-Capitalist Convergence?
I admit that up until recently I’ve had trouble taking seriously the violent protesters and tear-gas throwers who nowadays show up whenever a meeting of one of our great globalizing, multilateral institutions takes place.
I am still normal
Four years ago, I saw a great deal of Tony Blair. At that time, I was a political columnist for a British newspaper, and he was the Leader of the Opposition. As a result I saw him in public, in private, in the House of Commons, in newspaper offices; I saw him shaking hands, kissing …
Should We Assassinate Saddam?
Hands up anyone who remembers the first scene in Air Force One, the film in which Harrison Ford plays the American president as action hero: The opening credits roll, parachutes open up, American paratroopers swoop down.
French lessons post-Stalin
If the task of a good novel is to describe a particular time and a particular place in such a way that they seem real to people who never knew that time and that place, then here is a very good novel indeed.
Do We Need an International Criminal Court?
Although it briefly flashed onto the front pages this week, I expect that over the next few months, politicians will contrive to ensure that we hear as little as possible about the International Criminal Court.
Serendipity Rules OK
It isn’t history, it isn’t fiction, and it isn’t scholarship, although it contains elements of all three: in fact, one might say that The Oxford Companion to English Literature belongs in a genre all of its own. That being the case, one might also say that reviews of Companions to English Literature belong to a …
Fond Memories of Stalin
“Remember that the two presidents do not know each other,” one official cautioned the New York Times. “Mr. Putin,” opined their correspondent, “seems unlikely to achieve with Mr. Clinton the easy-going ‘Boris and Bill’ chemistry that dominated during Mr. Yeltsin’s two terms.”
Third thoughts on a tricky subject
Do we need another biography of Richard Nixon? Anthony Summers thinks we do, and you can see his point. Long vilified, even before Watergate, as one of the dirtiest players in American politics, Nixon experienced a revival towards the end of his life. Revisionist biographies appeared (not least one by Jonathan Aitken), speeches were made, …