Dominic Green

A commoner speaks.

The poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with one of the deadly Novichok series of nerve agents has plunged relations between Britain and Russia to their lowest level since Soviet times, sparking tit-for-tat diplomatic moves and a war of words. The crisis has raised…

There are two ways of looking at Brexit. One is confusing, the other is clear, and both are true. Many people in Britain would prefer not to look at all at Brexit. They would prefer to undo it by calling a second referendum, or contriving a slow legislative throttling that, like the assassination…

It is a matter of public record that in 2007 Max Mosley, the son of the British fascist Oswald Mosley and his posh, Hitler-loving wife Diana, did not enjoy what the News of the World called a “sick Nazi orgy with five hookers.” As the ruling in Mosley v. News Group Newspapers Ltd. (2008) confirms,…

Who poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia?

London.

It was a Frenchman who gave his surname to the term chauvinism, and it was a Frenchman, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose prosecution for sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York in 2011 now looks like the earliest tremor of the #MeToo movement.

Paris

As 2017 goes the way of the Titanic, it’s time to survey the lexical flotsam and jetsam bobbing in its wake. Which arcana drifted to the surface this year, much to our puzzlement? Which new coinages made it to the life rafts and can expect to keep afloat? Which flared brightly and then fizzled,…

President Trump’s decision to “officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel” is a high-risk statement that acknowledges “the obvious.” His intent to move the US embassy from the beachfront at Tel Aviv to Jerusalem restates that obvious without necessarily raising the risk. By granting…

Sunday Hill Farm, Wiltshire

As Oscar Wilde might have said, to lose one minister is unfortunate. To lose a second minister in the space of two weeks looks like carelessness, especially when the minister appears to have pursued secret diplomacy at odds with the positions of the Foreign Office,. To place a third minister under…

All politics aspires to the condition of entertainment. At least it does so these days, whether in London or in Washington. The British derive enjoyment from their national dramas, even when things go wrong—Dunkirk was the film of the summer. But that multi-series extravaganza known as Brexit makes…

On November 2, 1917—a hundred years ago this week—the British government sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, declaring its “sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” and promising Britain’s support in “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

On November 2, 1917—a hundred years ago this week—the British government sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, declaring its “sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” and promising Britain’s support in “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Theresa May’s speech at this week’s Conservative Party conference in Manchester, England, was meant to be the high point of the three-day event. Instead, her speech Wednesday morning became an extended and excruciating fiasco. None of this was May’s fault. It was just her bad luck. But luck is the…

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) painted watercolors throughout his European childhood. Like his family, the dependents of the peripatetic Dr. Fitzwilliam Sargent, watercolors were portable and picturesque. Sargent continued to paint watercolors in the 1870s as a student in Paris and in the 1880s…

The people of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq voted today in a referendum on independence from Baghdad. It could take a few days to tally the votes, but there can be little doubt about the result. The Kurds have struggled for self-determination for a century. In January 2005, the non-governmental…

Angela Merkel and the alliance of her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with the Bavarian social conservatives of the Christian Social Union (CSU) won Sunday's German federal elections, granting Merkel her fourth consecutive term as chancellor. But that is not the real news out of the…

A week is a long time in politics, and the days grow short as you reach September. Teresa May began last week with a victory, the passage of the EU withdrawal bill, previously known as the “Great Repeal Bill,” through the House of Commons. But her week ended with a harbinger of defeat. On Friday,…

Boston, Mass.

Henry James grew up with Thomas Cole’s View of Florence from San Miniato in the family parlor. Aspiring to become a painter, James took lessons from John La Farge; he had to settle for prose. The rest of his life he sought the company of expatriate painters like Frank Duveneck, James Whistler,…

"Tell me what you like,” John Ruskin wrote in 1860, "and I'll tell you what you are." By his tastes, D. J. Taylor is that white rhino in the taxonomy of professional writers, the man of letters. Early fossils of this species have been excavated from Grub Street in 18th-century London, where the…

As Theresa May went to Brussels Thursday for the opening of the two-day European Council summit, a European Union official warned that she was in for a “humiliating” experience. If so, May will feel at home on foreign soil.

London—Theresa May has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Britain's general election. By 5:00 a.m. EST, with 649 of 650 seats having declared, Britain looks set for a hung parliament. May's Conservatives have won 318 seats—6 short of the 326 needed for a majority, and 21 seats less than…

"It is time to say, enough is enough," Theresa May announced on Sunday morning, as forensic teams were examining the sites of the Islamist attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market and armed police were raiding homes in east London. "We cannot, and must not, pretend that things can continue as…

London

In the week following Salman Abedi's suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester on May 22, a great deal was revealed about the perpetrator, most of it deeply unsettling.

Boston

Boston

On Monday night in the English city of Manchester, a suicide bomber detonated a homemade IED in the foyer of the Manchester Arena, killing at least 22 people and wounding almost 60 others as they left a concert by Ariana Grande. Shortly after the worst terrorist attack in Britain since the 7/7…

The most unpredictable presidential election campaign in the history of the Fifth Republic ended with a suitably surprising outcome: For once, the pollsters and the commentators were right. After the confounding of the experts in last June's Brexit referendum and last November's U.S. presidential…

London

This morning’s calling of a snap election in Britain on June 8 strengthens Prime Minister Theresa May's position as Brexit negotiator—and not only in her negotiations with Brussels. "At this moment of enormous national significance, there should be unity here in Westminster," she announced on the…

Connoisseurs of Jew-hatred may differ over whether the world's most influential anti-Semitic institution is the government of Saudi Arabia, the government of Iran, or the websites of al Qaeda and ISIS. It is easier, however, to identify the world's most respectable anti-Semitic institution. That…

London

This afternoon's terrorist attack on the Houses of Parliament in central Westminster left four dead, including the attacker and a police officer, and twenty injured, some seriously. For the third time in a year, a lone killer has used a vehicle as a weapon on the streets of a major European city.…

"I  don't know where democracy will end," said the Habsburg statesman Klemens von Metternich, "but it can't end in a quiet old age." Metternich was an architect of a postwar European order—the Concert of Europe, assembled after the defeat of Napoleon. In his old age, he witnessed its disintegration…

"I  don’t know where democracy will end," said the Habsburg statesman Klemens von Metternich, "but it can't end in a quiet old age." Metternich was an architect of a postwar European order—the Concert of Europe, assembled after the defeat of Napoleon. In his old age, he witnessed its disintegration…

Paris

"The winner,” ABBA advised in 1980, “takes it all. The loser has to fall.” But not in Swedish politics, where proportional representation has created a smorgasbord of parties and has now contributed to a crisis of democracy.

Paris

Every January, Davos Man, that semi-mythical hominid whose natural habitat is the club lounges of major airports, migrates to his eponymous Swiss Alps resort for the World Economic Forum. There, he huddles in a warm cave of mutual congratulation. Last week, the usual avalanche of glib optimism came…

Every January, Davos Man, that semi-mythical hominid whose natural habitat is the club lounges of major airports, migrates to his eponymous Swiss Alps resort for the World Economic Forum. There, he huddles in a warm cave of mutual congratulation. Last week, the usual avalanche of glib optimism came…

"Brexit means Brexit," Theresa May said in July 2016 when she replaced David Cameron as Britain's prime minister. Since then, May has continued to insist that Brexit will mean Brexit, but without offering even a taste of what Brexit means. Would it be a "hard Brexit," cutting Britain off entirely…

"Brexit means Brexit,” Theresa May said in July 2016 when she replaced David Cameron as Britain's prime minister. Since then, May has continued to insist that Brexit will mean Brexit, but without offering even a taste of what Brexit means. Would it be a "hard Brexit," cutting Britain off entirely…

Politics being one damn thing after another, political language never sleeps. Fortunately, the insomniac hunter of neologisms David K. Barnhart has compiled a lexicon of au courant political terms. Should confirmation be needed that Americans are innovative, democratic, and deranged by…

Politics being one damn thing after another, political language never sleeps. Fortunately, the insomniac hunter of neologisms David K. Barnhart has compiled a lexicon of au courant political terms. Should confirmation be needed that Americans are innovative, democratic, and deranged by…

A historian can be wise after the fact, but a political analyst must be wise before it. Most commentators failed to detect the signs of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, despite their received wisdom and psephological sensitivity. (The exception seems to have been those relying on that most…

A historian can be wise after the fact, but a political analyst must be wise before it. Most commentators failed to detect the signs of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, despite their received wisdom and psephological sensitivity. (The exception seems to have been those relying on that most…

The European state system, Leon Trotsky wrote in 1932, resembles "the 'system' of cages in an impoverished provincial zoo." The European Union, the ideal of postwar reconstruction, was intended to replace the tariffs, borders, and belligerence of the old Europe. With the euro currency and the "four…

The European state system, Leon Trotsky wrote in 1932, resembles “the 'system' of cages in an impoverished provincial zoo." The European Union, the ideal of postwar reconstruction, was intended to replace the tariffs, borders, and belligerence of the old Europe. With the euro currency and the "four…

The insertion of Nigel Farage into the dealings between President-elect Donald Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has yet to make the U.S.-U.K. Special Relationship more special, but it has already made it more complex and unpredictable. Is this Twitter-begot triangle a preview of…

London

If a cultured American is one who can hear the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger, then an educated Briton is someone who gets the jokes in 1066 and All That, W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman’s 1930 pastiche of patriotic legends and schoolroom clichés. In that loving spoof,…

We need to talk about Lionel Shriver. On September 8, the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin and several other novels gave the keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers' Festival. Shriver had wanted to talk about "fiction and identity politics," but the organizers asked her to talk about "community…

We need to talk about Lionel Shriver. On September 8, the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin and several other novels gave the keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers' Festival. Shriver had wanted to talk about "fiction and identity politics," but the organizers asked her to talk about "community…

London

London

New Haven, Conn.

The walls are going up all over Europe; we shall not see them lowered in our lifetime. The dream of "ever-closer union," and the eventual merging of nations into a United States of Europe, is over. From the white cliffs of Dover in the west, where David Cameron refused to follow Brussels's orders…

Sleepless and sweaty in the “great heats” of July 1840, Ralph Waldo Emerson reached for something sublime and sensual: “There was nothing for me but to read the Vedas, the bible of the tropics.” The problem was that the “grand ethics” of Vedic mythology, and the “unfathomable power” of Vedic…

London

The eighties, as the hipsters among us know, are undergoing a revival. The music and fashion of the decade have been disinterred, and its politics too. Where, the pundits of America ask, is our Reagan? Meanwhile in Britain, the Labour party has revived its eighties’ follies by choosing an…

Did David Cameron, Britain's excruciatingly reasonable prime minister, commit an unspeakable act when he was a student at Oxford?

Europe’s migrant crisis, the continent’s greatest humanitarian disaster since the aftermath of World War II, continues to worsen. The summer began with mass drownings in the Mediterranean and bickering between the European Union and the governments of its member states over who should foot the bill…

All royal families are alike; all are unhappy in their own way. Most of their unhappiness is as common as their subjects, but the best of it has the resonance and unworldliness of a fairy tale. Royalty, as the proverb says of the Jews, are like other people, only more so.

Friday morning, David Cameron returned to Downing Street as Britain's prime minister. After a campaign of unsurpassed tedium, the General Election came alive last night with the first exit poll, and a Conservative victory out of nowhere. For weeks, the incumbent Conservatives and the Labour…

Springtime in the Mediterranean: The skies are clear, the waters are calm, and the migrants are drowning. In 2014, the U.S. Border Patrol estimated that 307 people died while being smuggled into the United States from Mexico. So far this year, more than 1,650 people have drowned as they attempted…

"Who,” asked Hitler in August 1939, “speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Raphael Lemkin did, and in 1944, Lemkin, a Polish-born Jew, published his theory of genocide. Lemkin’s models were the ongoing Holocaust of Europe’s Jews and the Meds Yeghern, or “Great Calamity,” of 1915-16:…

There he is on the cover of Sgt. Pepper, tottering between Carl Jung and Fred Astaire, breathing fumes over Marilyn Monroe’s bare back and William Burroughs’s bald pate. Edgar Allan Poe, the original Man in Black—before Johnny Cash, before the Beatles in Hamburg, before the bohemians in Paris. The…

Under the peak of Mount Taygetus, the wooded Vyros Gorge tumbles into the Gulf of Messinia at the small port of Kardamyli. Around the headland is a blue cove and the hamlet of Kalamitsi. A flock of low, white houses, their pantiled roofs the color of burnt orange, huddle under stripes of gray-green…

In Tim’s Vermeer, a 2013 documentary film about Tim Jenison, an inventor of digital software, Jenison cracks the technical code of Vermeer’s art. Inspired by the theories of David Hockney and physicist Charles Falco, he builds a replica of Vermeer’s Delft studio in Las Vegas and, with a camera…