One of the only ways for foreign correspondents to get into Mali now is to rely on the services of human smugglers, as I did a few weeks ago. A former journalist turned fixer told me there were ‘no ...
In the preface to the Decameron Boccaccio describes Florentine society laid waste by bubonic plague in the mid-14th century. But before he gets to that he has a confession for the reader: he has been ...
In November 2022, archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Philadelphia, two hours south of Cairo, discovered a clump of papyri in a shallow grave. On one of them were written nearly a hundred ...
Music critic Ian Penman is back with a pioneering book of essays alluding to a lost moment in musical history ‘when cultures collided and a cross-generational and “cross-colour” awareness was born’.