India
I love how awful My Oxford Year is
The punters are saying My Oxford Year is a disaster. ‘Predictable, uninspiring and laughable,’ complains some meanie on Rotten Tomatoes.…
How the railways shaped modern culture
Cue track seven of Frank Sinatra’s 1957 album Only the Lonely and you can hear Ol’ Blue Eyes pretending to…
Portrait of the week: War in the Middle East, drought in Yorkshire and a knighthood for Beckham
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, announced a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs (which he had previously…
The bloodstained origins of the Italian Renaissance
Prolonged warfare between city states was conducted largely by mercenaries, whose accrued fortunes translated into social status through patronage of the arts
The stigma still surrounding leprosy
Though long curable, the disease remains endemic in India, Mozambique and Brazil, with lack of medical funding leaving lepers among the world’s most marginalised people
How do you exhibit living deities?
The most-watched TV programme in human history isn’t the Moon landings, and it isn’t M*A*S*H; chances are it’s Ramayan, a…
How Pakistan’s most powerful man provoked India’s missile attack
From a western perspective, memorising all 114 chapters of the Quran might seem an unusual qualification for a national leader.…
Will ‘The Seeker’ find the truth about the Covid lab leaks?
At the Royal Calcutta Turf Club, where ghosts of British nabobs look out over the racecourse, my neuroscientist wife spoke…
The Coromandel coast under threat
The rich biodiversity of Chennai’s littoral is in imminent danger from toxic petrochemical industries, warns the ardent naturalist and activist Yuvan Aves
An excellent sixth-form drama project: Santi & Naz, at Soho Theatre, reviewed
Santi & Naz is a drama set in the Punjab in 1947 that uses an ancient and thrilling storyline about…
A dreamy, if overly ambitious show: Silk Roads, at the British Museum, reviewed
Towards the end of the British Museum’s Silk Roads show, there is a selection of treasures found in England. Among…
In Mumbai, everyone asks about Rishi and Boris
Mumbai is my kind of town, a party town. In my first weeks living here, I was out most nights…
South Asia in a time of the breaking of nations
Avinash Paliwal’s gripping tale of espionage opens in 1949, with newly independent India, Pakistan and Burma racked by rivalries in one of the most intricately partitioned areas on Earth
India will never join China’s anti-western alliance
On the 15 November Xi Jinping will mark the 12th anniversary of his becoming general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party…
What prompted Vivien Leigh’s dark journey into madness?
Did her many miscarriages so unhinge the beautiful actress that she ended up a sex-crazed harridan, screaming obscenities at those she loved?
Forget Eton. This Mumbai team should play Harrow at Lord’s
The first thing I do is turn my watch upside down. India is five-and-a-half hours ahead of the UK, so…
The complexities of our colonial legacy
Weighing the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ effects of British imperialism is a futile exercise, says Sathnam Sanghera. But he comes perilously close to doing just that
The greed and hypocrisy of the opium trade continue to shock
Amitav Ghosh admits he found writing his history difficult because of the obscene profiteering and suffering he had to cover
Has Bazball rescued or ruined cricket?
Thanks to Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, English Test cricket has been revolutionised – at the expense of the gentle, contemplative game
Why Sunak’s prayers in Delhi matter
Ever since Alastair Campbell’s declaration that ‘we don’t do God’, no prime minister – and almost no politician – has…
The special relationship
Britain should not be nervous of India
Rishi’s Indian summer
The PM’s visit to New Delhi could be a defining moment
Eastern promises
Many suspect mystics have exploited naive westerners in search of spiritual enlightenment over the past century, Philip Hensher discovers
Down in the woods today
With rewilding projects multiplying worldwide, brown, black and grizzly bears are making a bold comeback. But how much bear can we bear?
Travellers’ tales
In the absence of their own written records, they have been ‘invented’ and misrepresented in Europe ever since their arrival in the Middle Ages, says Klaus-Michael Bogdal
