Notebooks

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Marine Le Pen’s reckoning

For decades, Marine Le Pen has called for stricter laws to tackle corruption in public life. Now, the law has caught up with her, unleashing a political earthquake that could trans..

Agnès Poirier April 1, 2025

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Shostakovich spoke truth to power

The Russian composer's evocation of the crimes of Nazism and Communism in his Babi Yar Symphony illustrates both the hallowed nature of art, and the artist's responsibility to spea..

Benjamin Poore March 31, 2025

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Erdogan’s pious generation takes to the streets

President Erdogan's incarceration of his chief political rival has united a generation of young Turks in opposition to his rule. His hold on power, eroded by economic crises and co..

Hannah Lucinda Smith March 26, 2025

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Gatsby, still great at 100

In an age of rising inequality and economic disaffection, Fitzgerald's slender satire of American East Coast society, with its evocation of the conflict between the old world and n..

Guy Stagg March 25, 2025

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The idea of Syria is worth saving

The world has spent decades brandishing arbitrarily drawn maps depicting Syrians in sectarian and separatist terms. Yet this reductive approach ignores another, deeper tradition of..

Rime Allaf March 24, 2025

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Reading the map of love

A relic of the salons of 17th-century France, Mademoiselle de Scudéry's Carte de Tendre tells a universal story about the tensions between desire and civilised behaviour.

Muriel Zagha March 24, 2025

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The Statue of Liberty’s Egyptian origins

The inspiration for the Statue of Liberty comes from Egypt, not France. And if its artist had had his way, she would be greeting ships in Port Said on the Mediterranean at the entr..

Maria Golia March 21, 2025

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England’s mystical inheritance

Two intensely scholarly men with roots in England's 'Middle Earth', J.R.R. Tolkien and Enoch Powell, crafted mystical visions of nationhood, rooted in the past.

Eliot Wilson March 19, 2025

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The maverick genius of Georges Bizet

The longevity of Bizet's Carmen, despite its disastrous premiere, is a testament to the composer's genius and creativity. With every performance, we still recognise its immortal re..

Nicholas Opfermann March 17, 2025