“It’s time to move on,” said an American friend when I had told her that I was en route to see a Polish war film and the night before had gone to a lecture about Churchill, my pre-Christmas festivities. “We’re obsessed here,” I told her. The next...
Continue readingThis is the most global general election I can remember. A friend in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) asked me on Facebook if I would vote for Jeremy Corbyn, telling me the Labour leader was the best candidate. A long-time friend and lif...
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It’s as if there is no joy left in the world. These days I feel like the satirical 1930s American comic strip character in Li’l Abner, the well-meaning Joe Btfsplk, who brings misfortune on everyone and has a dark rain cloud always hovering over h...
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Reporting gender-based violence in conflict is a metaphorical minefield as well as a literal one. We have also never been more sensitised to the issues of mental health and trauma. Writing about the use of rape as a weapon of war is complex, and n...
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I miss the Cold War. The spy swaps on bridges, dead drops, sleeper agents, the threat of nuclear war, and going through Checkpoint Charlie from East to West Berlin and back. Anything is better than Brexit. Crossing the border in Cyprus between th...
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Strange as it looks to us, the goings-on in Westminster over the past two weeks must seem even more baffling to those looking in from abroad. If the fate of nations weren’t in the balance, it would be a farce. A farce where clever boys use languag...
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Parliament is to be suspended, and five sheep are grazing on Hampstead Heath. It’s the Brexit version of chaos theory in a tin-pot dictatorship. We know it was Boris Johnson, not the Queen, who dreamt up the plan to prorogue Parliament. But it wa...
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Donald Trump must have thought he had walked into the TV studio where they shoot “The Price Is Right” when he got up last week and decided he wanted Greenland. The American game show is possibly the longest-running broadcast since 1956: four conte...
Continue readingCarrie Symonds has moved into Number 10 with her Prime Minster partner, who is under pressure from his party. The question is, which will last longer – Boris Johnson’s premiership or his relationship with his new squeeze? LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUA...
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The first time I met Rory Stewart was in Afghanistan at a dinner party held in the house where I was living. I had just arrived in Kabul and had no idea who this odd, lanky Brit was. But I have two vivid memories of that evening. One was how much ...
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Dispatches from the Kabul Café 
Genocide – Personal Stories, Big Questions 