Notebooks

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

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Noel Coward’s too brief encounter with the silver screen

How did ‘the Master’ manage, at times, to work so brilliantly within the recorded image during his own lifetime, and why has it all gone so badly wrong ever since?

Alexander Larman June 5, 2023

A village located between green terrace fields in the barren landscape of Upper Mustang.

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Mustang: the heart of Nepal’s China dream

The Himalayan region is where Nepal’s aspirations of Chinese-backed economic development are being realised.

Amish Raj Mulmi June 2, 2023

Young people hold portraits of people who died in Ukraine between 2014 and 2022, during the Immortal Regiment march marking the 77th anniversary of the end of the Second World War on Tverskaya street in central Moscow, Russia.

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Inside Russia’s forever war with the West

Russian media propagates a militaristic vision of national identity at odds with a malicious West: but where does this story come from?

Jade McGlynn June 2, 2023

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The Stalinist who wrote the playbook for French foreign policy

The philosopher-statesman Alexander Kojève and President Emmanuel Macron make unlikely bedfellows as France tries to reshape the world order.

Angus Brown May 31, 2023

Poster for the Cannes film festival, 2023.

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Cannes: festival of freedom

The Cannes film festival remains as free spirited as ever.

Agnès Poirier May 27, 2023

President Gerald Ford and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger conversing in the grounds of the White House in 1974.

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Henry Kissinger at 100: a century of service

Henry Kissinger has served his adopted nation for more than half a century and made a significant and positive contribution to America’s role in the world.

Thomas A. Schwartz May 26, 2023