Notebooks

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

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is pulled off stage after shots are fired at a rally in Pennsylvania, 13 July 2024.

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The dark spectacle of American political violence

Throughout American history, assassinations and attempted assassinations have been committed and treated as violent, public spectacles which blend theatricality, media fascination ..

Angus Reilly July 15, 2024

Lady Bird and Lyndon Johnson taking phone calls in their White House bedroom after he announced his withdrawal from the 1968 election.

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How LBJ stepped back

Joe Biden faces a dilemma experienced by Lyndon Johnson in 1968: how does a president withdraw from an election while preserving their power and legacy?

Luke A. Nichter July 12, 2024

Supporters of the presidential candidate of the reformist camp, Peseschkian, cheer at an election rally in the capital.

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Inside Iran’s election circus

Rather than presaging a reformist revival, the Iranian presidential election revealed the vast chasm between the state and society-at-large.

Ali Ansari July 11, 2024

Andy Murray at the Wimbledon Championships in 2015

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The agony and the ecstasy of Andy Murray

Andy Murray played tennis more brutally, more effectively, and with greater professional success than any Englishman of the modern era, while refusing to play the game of English m..

Alastair Benn July 11, 2024

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How women made Benjamin Disraeli

Hero of the 19th-century Tory party, Benjamin Disraeli's many amorous conquests, and their many complications, illuminate the startling contradictions of the man who changed Victor..

David Coates July 9, 2024

French flag at Lichtenberg Castle in Alsace.

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France fragmented

Oppositional forces in French society have intensified. What were once cracks are now gaping holes.

Agnès Poirier July 8, 2024

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer speaks to supporters at a watch party for the results of the 2024 General Election in central London, as the party appears on course for a landslide win in the 2024 General Election.

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An uncertain idea of Britain

Neither major party campaigned in the general election with a clear sense of British economic and political identity. It is now up to the new Labour government to build one.

Angus Reilly July 5, 2024

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Hollywood’s most gifted scribe

The late screenwriter Robert Towne's gift for complex, literate dialogue put him in the first rank of cinematic aristocracy.

Alexander Larman July 4, 2024

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Eric Rohmer’s timeless antidotes

The French film director Eric Rohmer observed and chronicled the behaviour of his contemporaries, and offered an alternative rooted in Christian morality.

Muriel Zagha July 3, 2024