Notebooks

Notebooks are snapshots from our writers, reflecting on current affairs and underappreciated aspects of culture and history.

Inside the gutted town hall of Limoges, 20 October 2026.

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All of France was in Limoges’s town hall

The arson attack on Limoges’s town hall destroyed centuries of history and damaged an inclusive vision of the Republic. Whether France defends it is a question for the future.

Muriel Zagha October 22, 2026

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, listens to a question during a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Berlin, Germany, 13 August 2025.

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The consumer-voter is killing German politics

Friedrich Merz's collapse in popularity owes less to his own failings than to the hollowing out of civic culture across the world's democracies.

Lukas Schmelter October 22, 2026

PARIS, FRANCE - 25 August 1944 - The Liberation of Paris, 25 - 26 August 1944. General Charles de Gaulle and his entourage set off from the Arc de Tri

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De Gaulle: I write your name

The second part of Antonin Baudry's de Gaulle epic is a fitting tribute to the men and women who saved France.

Alastair Benn October 21, 2026

Hand-coloured 18th-century etching of a French peasant being blessed by a bishop, pushed down by a nobleman and paying tax to a clerk.

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Is France heading for a new 1789?

The Fifth Republic’s deteriorating fiscal situation offers the strongest parallel with the waning years of the Ancien Régime.

Basile Marin and Léo Marin October 21, 2026

An artillery-cratered crossroads in Donbas.

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A debrief with Ukraine’s soldiers

Ukrainian soldiers returning from the frontline reveal that it is now a vast space policed by drones, in which death is a constant presence.

Peter Caddick-Adams October 20, 2026

Rose Main Reading Room, New York Public Library, Manhattan, New York, USA.

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The unknown painter behind Manhattan’s Gilded Age interiors

Though his name is all but forgotten, James Wall Finn’s paintings adorn some of Manhattan’s most beautiful rooms. Such obscurity suits a man who sought recognition only from peers ..

Jane Coombs October 20, 2026

Protesters and police clash in Place de la République, Paris, 17 October 2026.

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Darkness in the city of light

In Paris, the violence swirls surreally around the rhythms of French life.

Paul Lay October 19, 2026

A North Korean propaganda poster depicting the young Kim Il Sung.

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The Christian genesis of North Korea’s personality cult

North Korea’s first Great Leader, Kim Il Sung, owed as much to the charismatic Christian movements of the modern world as he did to Marxism-Leninism.

Jonathan Cheng October 19, 2026

Apprentices riot against ‘strangers’ in Cheapside on Evil May Day, 1517.

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Shakespeare’s riot of humanity

Those seeking to invoke Shakespeare in support of liberal causes should pay more attention to the historical context of his supposedly timeless words.

Jonathan Esty October 16, 2026