This morning Angela Merkel made clear that she wishes to see a European replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the helm of the IMF. “It is of course of great importance that we find a quick solution,” she added.
The German Chancellor carefully avoided any hints as to which of the various Europeans mooted for the IMF candidacy might receive …
The last time I was in Ireland, the country teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Its political leaders had already been written off as dead men walking (a little unfair to zombies, who are at least capable of inspiring fear if not respect), and its populace was mired in despair. Many Irish expressed the fear that their nation was heading …
“Of course it explains why the royal couple postponed their honeymoon to Abbottabad,” joked Jimmy Kimmel, one of the first U.S. television hosts to start mining Osama Bin Laden’s death for comedy. The funniest thing about Kimmel’s quip was that it appeared to contain a grain of truth. The announcement, the day after the wedding of the …
Tomorrow’s wedding—yes, that one—is termed a semi-state occasion. And it seems that the House of Windsor and Her Majesty’s Government have got themselves into a semi-state about it. Hear that screeching? It’s the noise of palace machinery being thrown into reverse as representatives of dodgy regimes are disinvited, while Tony Blair …
It was an injustice that led a 26-year-old Tunisian street trader called Mohammed Bouazizi to douse himself in petrol and strike a match. The resulting conflagration killed Bouazizi, crackled through Tunisia, chasing out its despised President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, and sparked uprisings across the region that are still burning …
The actor’s name is associated with many things—English charm (Hugh Grant can “twinkle for Britain,” the screenwriter and director Richard Curtis told me as I researched this piece about Grant’s on- and off-screen rival Colin Firth); a weakness for beautiful women including Elizabeth Hurley and Jemima Khan; and a weakness for less …
On May 5, Britons are invited to vote in a referendum about voting. They will decide whether to abandon the U.K.’s current first-past-the-post elections (FPTP) in favor of an Alternative Vote (AV) system, which isn’t really much different from FPTP except that voters rank candidates in order of preference, and as candidates are …
This afternoon a 25-year-old policeman was murdered by dissident Republicans in Northern Ireland. That news, horrific though it is, might seem unremarkable. After all, Ulster was—until really quite recently—a byword for terrorist violence. Only this morning, I laughed with pleasure to see a friend’s tweet. “Lovely lie in for 1st time …
One April evening in 1984, an after-work drink took a surreal turn. On the way to a bar, we skirted a police cordon at the entrance to St James’s Square in central London; we had barely lifted our pints before armed officers clattered into our midst and informed us that the cordon had been extended. We were not to leave. The Libyan …
Here’s an example of democracy in action, a privilege Western politicians are keen to extend as widely as possible. Today, members of Britain’s House of Commons discussed the wisdom of enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya. At 10.17 pm, almost seven hours after the start of their debate and more than three days after the establishment of …
Westminster Abbey is a “Royal Peculiar.” The term applies to churches that fall under the direct jurisdiction of the British monarch rather than a bishop, but seemed especially apt during a Commonwealth Day celebration held there on March 15. The service blended the pomp and tradition associated with Britain’s state occasions with vivid …
Muammar Gaddafi blamed a coalition of drugs, alcohol and Osama bin Laden for inciting Libyan youth to reject his dictatorial rule. Somewhat more credible commentators, including my colleague Bobby Ghosh, warn that the collapse of the Yemeni regime could boost the AQ affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, yet such concerns have done …
“I remember once seeing a photo of Muammar Gaddafi’s master bedroom,” wrote the Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland in the foreword to Dictators’ Homes, a book by cultural commentator Peter York that conclusively demonstrated the link between megalomania and a penchant for leopard skin and other big cat motifs. “It was in TIME or …
