Yemen
Norman Lewis – a restless adventurer with a passion for broken-down places
John Hatt’s latest selection of the travel writer’s journalism includes articles on Castro’s Havana, the Yemen of the Imams, Batista’s Cuba, French Indo-China and Neapolitan men of honour
Why the BBC International Playwriting Competition really matters
We don’t know whether ‘Aziz H’ listened to radio plays as he grew up in Yemen. In fact we don’t…
Did Jared Kushner punish Qatar because of a building on Fifth Avenue?
New York Talk about high life this is not. I smelled a rat long ago, but then the scent got…
Mohammad bin Salman is not a revolutionary. He’s the prince of PR
This week, Mohammad bin Salman, also known as MBS, is on his not-quite-state visit to Britain. A parade down the…
Risking all for the perfect mocha coffee
‘This guy’s crazy,’ says a taxi driver, listening to a BBC interview with a man who has decided to become…
Playing it safe
BBC1’s latest Sunday-night drama The Last Post, about a British military base in Aden in 1965, feels like a programme…
High life
After the heat in Greece, the Alps are cool and green and very comfortable. My sensei Richard Amos is over…
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, having continued talks through the night in Brussels, announced that he had achieved a ‘special status’ for…
Portrait of the week
Home In a speech at the Shanghai stock exchange, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a feasibility study…
Portrait of the week
Home Tom Hayes, aged 35, a former City trader who rigged the Libor rates daily for nearly four years while…
Al-Qaeda could end up the big winners in Syria
Fear has driven the Arab states to support the West’s great enemy
High life
I have signed an affidavit for a hearing in the High Court stating that Janan Harb was, to my knowledge,…
Portrait of the week
Home At least 30 British people were among 38 shot dead at a beach resort at Sousse in Tunisia by…
Shifting sands in Saudi
Why America’s once-cautious ally suddenly looks so skittish
Portrait of the week
Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into…
The hype jihad
Isis slaughters kidnap victims because it guarantees headlines. It's better at slaughtering innocents than it is at winning wars
The real Arab Spring
Middle East protest has its roots not in Islam but in frustrated enterprise
