Poetic Injustice
The Arts Council is no longer subsidising poetry publishers but giving direct grants to poets instead. The result: the death of the enriching working relationship between editor and poet
No French Please
Sacre bleu! Why bother learning any French when in France you’ll just be humiliated? Let’s study Mandarin, or Arabic, or Spanish in schools instead.
Hands Off Judges
The 'modernising' of the judiciary by politicians, and their insistence judges be cosy with senior civil servants, undermines a centuries-old institution
Erdogan’s Folly
For the neo-Ottoman Turkish Prime Minister, the project for Gezi Park is an iconic step towards the return of a muscular Islamic state
Dayan’s Lesson
The great, but flawed, Moshe Dayan understood what the Israeli Left now cannot: that Israelis need a commitment to their security
Jocks Away
Franklin Foer and Marc Tracy's Jewish Jocks features some real life He-Menschen, but also a host of anti-jocks: tennis's first transexual player and the world record hot dog competition eater
Cooking the Books
Lucky Osborne
Holocaust Amnesia
People who argue that Holocaust Memorial Day is past its sell-by date are wrong. There is still so much to learn from such unprecedented evil
Star of the East
Blogger Han Han targets the official media and politicians but his omissions of subjects like Tibet highlights the limits of dissent in China
Rights and Wrongs
The Case of Lilian Ladele, hounded out of her job as a registrar for her Christian beliefs, is evidence of a rising religious intolerance