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Notebooks

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

A protest rally in Istanbul, Turkey.
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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
Still from the Great Gatsby.
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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
A young woman holds the flag of the Syrian Revolution with the words 'free Syria' on it in Arabic.
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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
The Carte de Tendre by Mademoiselle de Scudéry.
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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
Vintage colour etching of the Statue of Liberty.
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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
Samuel Palmer's The Curfew, 1870.
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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
A scene from Bizet's 'Carmen' illustrated in a 19th-century advertisement.
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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
Crowds wave the flag of the Syrian Revolution in Aleppo to celebrate the overthrown of the Assad regime.
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Syria’s sectarian trap

Syria’s social fabric is in shreds, and forces embodying some of the country's most extreme sectarian tendencies are ascendant on all sides.

Kyle Orton March 17, 2025
A sign welcomes visitors outside the Bic Factory in Montsévrain, France
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The pen that became a symbol of France

Since it was first released in 1970, the revolutionary Bic 4-Colour ballpoint pen has come to embody a powerful ‘myth’ of French modernity.

Muriel Zagha March 14, 2025

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