China
‘Money, money, money’
The Dalai Lama on Cameron’s China policy
A terrible beauty
A.S. Byatt on the dark, deadly secrets lurking beneath a calm, white surface
Cheer up: we’re robust enough to withstand a shock from China
Home from the hot Aegean, huddled by the fire as rain ruins the bank holiday weekend, I’m thinking: what gloom…
Sorry, but I can’t join in the China panic
MS Queen Victoria, 38°N 19°E I’ll do my best, but I’ve got to be honest: being surrounded by shining Ionian…
Monster of misrule
Mao Zedong, once the Helmsman, Great Teacher and Red Red Sun in Our Hearts, and still the Chairman, died in…
Ai Weiwei
In September, the Royal Academy of Arts will present a solo exhibition of works by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.…
Portrait of the week
Home The Metropolitan Police encouraged people to celebrate VJ Day despite reports in the Mail on Sunday (picked up from…
Exit the dragon
China’s long boom may finally be ending. The consequences for the world will be profound
Champions of absurdity
Jumping the shark isn’t yet an Olympic sport, but if it were the International Olympic Committee would be a shoo-in…
Lost horizon
Sikkim was a Himalayan kingdom a third of the size of Wales squeezed between China, India, Nepal and Bhutan. I…
Serial thriller
For keen students of China, this week’s television provided yet more proof that Deng Xiaoping’s decision to open the country…
The hardest man of all
From the unpromising and desperately unforgiving background that forged his iron will and boundless ambition, Temujin (as Genghis Khan was…
Only the lonely
This book starts with a Chinese boy so privileged and pampered that, at 21, he can’t open his own suitcase,…
To Hell in a handcart — again
Despite the offer of joy proposed in the subtitle, this is a deeply troubling book by one of Britain’s foremost…
One foot on the catwalk
St James Theatre hosts a new play about Alexander McQueen (real name Lee), whose star flashed briefly across the fashion…
Katmandu Notebook
After the first earthquake we were told that the chance of another one was 200 to 1. A fortnight later,…
Shrunk
America’s psychoanalysts are becoming an endangered species
The roots of the matter
British people buy £43 million worth of human hair a year. So who’s selling?
Indulge your inner reptile
What do you get if you cross renegade psychoanalyst Carl Jung with lizard-men conspiracist David Icke? It is a question…
Designer fatigue
Different concepts of luxury may be inferred from a comparison of the wedding feast of Charles Bovary and Emma Rouault…
Little brother’s helper
Can there ever have been another book in which one of the authors (Anne Thurston in this case) so effectively…
Just in time, Osborne answers Labour’s 50p tax trick with a bumper monthly surplus
Last week’s public borrowing and tax-receipt figures, headlined ‘Chancellor hails biggest monthly surplus in seven years’, received considerably less attention…
Austerity really is a virtue, whatever the Greeks think
The only question I remember from my Oxford moral philosophy paper was ‘What is integrity and is it a virtue?’…
No mappa mundi
As a boy I spent quite a lot of my free time trying to fake up ancient-looking documents. This hopeless…
This time round, the eurozone looks robust enough to get rid of its Greek problem
Ever since European Central Bank president Mario Draghi declared himself ready, in July 2012, ‘to do whatever it takes to…
