In conversation the other day with a writer who also teaches the art and craft of writing at university, I heard a dispiriting truth: that university students in Britain are no longer willing to read Paul Bowles.

He is, said the writer, considered beyond the pale.

I understand what the writer was delicately trying to convey. Bowles, who wrote about North Africa, was not beyond the pale; rather, he was too pale, a pale white male who travelled around recording his impressions of the world and pretending they were somehow true because he said them.

In other words, Bowles, whose…

I was very taken by a British professor’s assertion the other day that bankers and pastoralists share more than we might think. Both, said Ian Scoones, work with deep, pervasive uncertainty and both often face unknown unknowns. This makes, he suggested, for “a very distinct approach to navigating day-to-day practices, as well as long-term futures”.

It’s a fascinating comparison and Professor Scoones is well placed to make it because he’s an agricultural ecologist at the Institute of Development Studies and is interested in agrarian change and sustainability.

One of the points that emerges from the professor’s argument about pastoralists is…

Joe Biden hasn’t been US president very long but six months are up, as of July 20. In that half-year, he’s run an MOT and a tune-up of America’s foreign policy apparatus.

He’s re-opened the usual diplomatic channels.

He’s reassured allies that America will be predictable.

Adversaries know too that Mr Biden’s America will be predictable.

After four years of Donald Trump’s tweetstorms and social media sulks, we’re back in the usual world of an American presidency that doesn’t have the commander-in-chief undercutting his secretary of state, even as he empowers his diplomats and allows meetings to run as they…

On 20 July, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos became the second billionaire in a matter of weeks to take a flashy joyride into space. The date was significant, marking 52 years since the first moon landing in 1969.

Nine days previously, another billionaire, British business mogul Richard Branson, had also taken off for the edge of space. A third billionaire, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, has reportedly reserved a seat to visit space with Virgin Galactic, Branson’s company.

What’s the point of these intergalactic endeavors? The three billionaires claim it’s a necessary, almost philanthropic, investment in the future of humanity.

…

Once upon a time, people actually believed in the “ Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”. It went as follows: No two countries that had McDonald’s restaurants would go to war. Before the turn of the millennium, it was still possible to naively believe that people would consider a Big Mac and fries an acceptable substitute for war, the worst staple of human history.

Not so much in 2021. It’s been seven years since Russia annexed Crimea. The Syrian civil war raged for years and years and now appears to be a frozen conflict. Libya has been at war with…

The aftermath of the assassination of Haiti’s president Jovenel Moise has made apparent the country’s extreme precariousness. It has no head of state, no functioning legislature until recently, two rival acting prime ministers, as well as a third claimant to power — the head of the senate; and the head of Haiti’s supreme court died from the coronavirus in June.

Meanwhile, the country hasn’t administered a single dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and armed gangs are running amok, with kidnappings and violence on the rise. …

Not too long ago, I took delivery of my copy of Annalee Newitz ‘s ‘Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age’. (I bought the book on pre-order; it was officially released mid-March.) So, I’m increasingly aware of a slew of new books on cities.

Last year there was Greg Woolf’s ‘The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History’.

And now, American historian Michael Kulikowski ‘s Rome-focussed story ‘Imperial Tragedy: From Constantine’s Empire to the Destruction of Roman Italy AD 363–568' has gone into paperback.

It was Professor Kulikowski’s recent review of Greg Woolf’s book (paywall)…

Britain is dealing with a pingdemic with an app advising people with a “ping” to self-isolate because they came into contact with someone who has contracted Covid-19.

On Friday, the UK recorded 51,000 cases of the pingdemic.

The caseload is expected to rise to more than half-a-million within days. That’s the pingdemic not the pandemic because so many people are being pinged by the NHS Test and Trace app that public transport, utilities and food shops face crippling staff shortages. Everyone’s isolating. Iceland (the store, not the country), which has a proud record of staying open throughout the pandemic, says…