Letting The Right Ones In
'How hospitable will Germans be now that travel restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians have been lifted?'
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Viking Versus Sepoy
The changing of the guard in the world of chess was achieved not by smash-and-grab play, but by herculean displays of patience
The Best Years of American Cinema
The greatest American movie of all time was made in 1946 and you'll never have heard of it
A Cold War Chill
'Angela Merkel's mobile phone is her instrument of power. What happens when this tool of democracy is subverted by our most important ally?'
Radio Play
Chess may not seem suited to radio, but in the Sixties the BBC broadcast special programmes featuring the world’s greatest ever players
Damian McBride: A Cautionary Tale
Did Gordon Brown’s aide receive moral formation at Peterhouse, Cambridge? If not, why not?
True Grits
'We drove into Breaux Bridge, “the crawfish capital of the world”, and the place was shrouded in an early dusk: it was hurricane season'
Twinkle Toes
Borislav Ivanov’s gadget-enhanced attempt to cheat his way to sporting success could have been lifted from a James Bond film
The Aesthetics of the Everyday
We shouldn’t be satisfied with solidly utilitarian coins, stamps and the dreaded “street furniture”. Good design can be incredibly heartening
A Literary Life
‘The death of Marcel Reich-Ranicki highlighted how ill at ease the German intelligentsia still is with its Nazi past’
Crying Wolf And Playing Chicken
David Runciman’s history of democracy occasionally succumbs to a Tocquevillian penchant for paradox, but his argument is brilliantly and convincingly delivered
The Sublime Soviet
Leonid Stein was a virtuoso player whose unexplained death at 38 robbed the world of his otherworldly attacking brilliance