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On the road
“In the summer of 1980, in the grip of some Kerouac-ish fantasy, I opted to hitch-hike from Laredo to New York”
In search of Primo Levi
On writing the life of a very private man
Arthur Koestler
An extract from the forthcoming second volume of memoirs by David Pryce Jones
Jakey
‘Everybody loved Jake Rosenheim, except his son Jimmy, who hated him’
Shakespeare: Mimesis and desire
“Why do we want what we want? Where do our desires come from? Why do we chase the things that elude us?” A dialogue between René Girard and Robert Pogue Harrison, introduced by Cynthia Haven
Corbyn waves the flag of anti-Semitism
A New York lecture
Ghost Dancers
Six new poems
Unpublished poems by Robert Conquest
The hitherto unknown wartime poems by Robert Conquest, with commentary by his wife and editor Elizabeth, take us back to a time when national survival was in mortal peril
Patriotism, cosmopolitanism and democracy
‘A sudden reassertion of national sovereignty and identity is perceived by many as a reversal of what has come to resemble a natural order of things’
Bachelor
A new Chicago short story by Joseph Epstein
Majority rule; minority rights
It is folly to treat UK race relations as totally divorced from the rest of human experience. We need to look at the larger global picture
American revolutions: Rewriting the language of the unheard
‘Dissenting viewpoints — for example, the belief that America is not an intrinsically racist country—are shunned as further proof of racist pathologies’
The favourites
From Piers Gaveston onwards, controversial courtiers have a long history in British politics.How unusual is Dominic Cummings?