Notebooks

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

The Exodus in 1947 after a British takeover.

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Stopping the Exodus: an impossible task

The voyage in 1947 of the Exodus, a ship chartered by a Zionist militia, piled pressure on the British government to relax the limits it had imposed on Jewish immigration to Palest..

James Barr November 21, 2023

Storage tanks for oil and gas in Sweden, 1969.

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Securing Scandinavia

Finland and Sweden have woken up to the fact that, in a fragmented, destabilised world, countries need to adopt measures to guarantee ‘security of supply’. Their allies should do s..

Elisabeth Braw November 16, 2023

A township in the wine region of Western Cape Province, South Africa.

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J.M. Coetzee’s absence without leave

The Nobel Prize winner's readers need him to aim the sharp point of his pen at the current state of South Africa, the country that drove him away.

Rob Lownie November 14, 2023

People take part in a commemoration of the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht in the Beth Zion synagogue.

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The growing threat to Jewish life in Germany

Hamas' attack on Israel has triggered a huge increase in attacks on Jews in Germany. The question is: how long will society keep its eyes shut to the growing threat to Jewish life ..

Katja Hoyer November 14, 2023

Jewish settlers protest at Tapuach, a major junction in the northern West Bank, 30 April 2013.

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The Messianic roots of the modern settler movement

Sometimes the Israeli government and the settlers’ aims are in conflict and sometimes they intersect. Today they are as closely intertwined as they have ever been.

Michael Goldfarb November 10, 2023

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Fake Shakespeare

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of one of the most important books in English literature: William Shakespeare's First Folio. Yet the history of the Folio i..

Josh Mcloughlin November 10, 2023

Mural to commemorate the Portuguese Carnation Revolution of 1974.

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Commemorating Portugal’s ambiguous revolution

Almost half a century of autocratic rule came to an end in Portugal on 25 April 1974. As the country looks forward to marking this momentous event, will its troubled socialist gove..

Tom Gallagher November 8, 2023

Illustration from Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.

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Jules Verne’s paradoxes of progress

Jules Verne's exhilarating blend of science, adventure and fantasy proved a winning formula, but the prolific author was also a complex thinker, who skewed towards a deistic view o..

Patricia Fara October 31, 2023

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The many meanings of Jihad

Just because Jihad doesn’t always mean ‘holy war’, it doesn’t follow that it never means holy war.

Fitzroy Morrissey October 30, 2023