Despite a hard-and-fast refusal to discuss Lilith for nearly six years on my social media platform, Jewitches, she remains the most popular question, request, and topic of discussion…Many know her as merely Adam’s first wife, the prequel to Eve, but her history is far more complex.
King’s Secretary: William Paget and the Last Years of the Reign of Henry VIII By Andrew Johnston
Tudor history buffs and attentive readers of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy will recognise the name William Paget. Others will require some words of introduction. Paget (1505/6–63) was an able and influential diplomat and administrator who rose to become principal secretary to Henry VIII. ‘Rose’ is the operative word. Paget, like his predecessor and mentor Thomas Cromwell, was a self-made man, though his father, a sergeant serving the sheriff of London, was able to provide him with a grammar school and Cambridge education.
The Last Invasion of England: 1688 and the Dutch Armada By Arthur der Weduwen
Much is exceptional about the Bayeux Tapestry currently on magnificent display in the British Museum, but nothing is quite so exceptional as the event itself. As the museum’s website reminds us, 1066 ‘was the last time England was successfully invaded’. Our sea-girt immunity from foreign invasion has been at the centre of ‘Our Island Story’ ever since, with the Channel confounding the hubris of Philip II in 1588 and 1596, of Napoleon in 1803 and of Hitler in 1940.
Imperial Predator: Britain and the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire By David S Tonge
In his survey of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, David S Tonge sees Britain as an aggressive superpower, hence the title of his excellent book. My one quibble is zoological. ‘Predator’ may not be quite the right word. For in much of Tonge’s story Britain is less lion than vulture: what zoologists call an obligate scavenger – or a necrophagous power – feeding on carrion. The Ottoman carcass had already been wounded by Russian aggression, nationalist revolt, indebtedness and internal decay. There were exceptions, and Britain could be predatory when circumstances demanded, notably in Cyprus and Alexandria, but its more characteristic pose was to sniff the odour of mortality and arrive in time for lunch.
“I don’t deserve to die like this,” said one passenger on Flight 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv. The motive of the cockpit stabbing remains unknown, officials said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the flight’s injured captain, Israeli passengers and reserve pilots, who helped secure the plane and land it safely. The attacker has not been identified.
Christa Pike was convicted of murdering a classmate in 1995. It was not clear what went wrong in the execution or what her current medical condition was.
As the alarm bells sound ever louder about the potentially existential threat of breakneck AI development, people far removed from Silicon Valley debates about the future of the artificial intelligence revolution are voicing other more immediately tangible worries about the building of the vast datacentres that power these entities.
For this week’s cover story, economics and political writer Eduardo Porter, analyses why communities are pushing back against AI and the future that the big tech plutocrats want to create. These fears, based around environmental concerns over resource use and rapid societal change, are, he argues, far more complex than luddite attitudes or nimbyism.
It’s a position exemplified by reporting from two rural communities in India and the UK where vast datacentres are already under construction or being planned. As Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan find out, the villagers of Tarluvada, in Andhra Pradesh, feel that government promises of a “golden age” that a hyperscale Google datacentre would bring them have been broken. Meanwhile, Sandra Laville meets protesters in Great Torrington, Devon, who sense that they are being kept in the dark about plans for an AI campus, one of Europe’s largest, in a Unesco-designated nature reserve.
Spotlight| Kyiv’s cold front is approaching Charlotte Higgins reports on how residents are preparing for winter, stocking up on food and determination, as Russia increases its attacks on energy infrastructure
Environment| What Nepal has taught Argentina What can the Patagonian town of El Chaltén at the foot of the Torre glacier do to avoid an event similar to the disaster in Nepal? María de los Ángeles Orfila finds out
Feature| Andy Burnham: a man with a plan As the first Labour conference with Andy Burnham as prime minister takes place, Hettie O’Brien finds out just how radical his policies could be
Opinion| Macron’s brave swansong In his final speech to the UN, Emmanuel Macron told the world how to stand up to Trump, says Steve Bloomfield
Culture| A minimalist at 90 As he prepares to celebrate a milestone birthday, Steve Reich tells Flora Willson how he developed his musical ideas and why he wants others to take up the baton of performing his works
Sheila Fitzpatrick on Stalinism: Fitzpatrick examines Irina Paperno’s Always under Siege: Olga Freidenberg’s Diary-Theory and the Everyday Terror of Stalinism, analyzing how classicist Olga Freidenberg’s secret writings framed the Siege of Leningrad and Soviet surveillance as a totalizing domestic regime.
Tom Stevenson on NATO and Russia: Stevenson reviews Carlo Masala’s If Russia Wins: A Scenario and Thomas Newman and John Pierson’s Atlantic Resolve: The War for Estonia, analyzing contemporary Western military simulations and anxieties regarding Baltic security.
Literary Studies & Biography
Edmund Gordon on William Golding: Reviewing William Golding: The Faber Letters edited by Tim Kendall, Gordon details the editorial tensions between Golding and Charles Monteith, focusing on substantial cuts to the original draft of Lord of the Flies.
Freya Johnston on Alexander Pope: Johnston explores Henry Power’s edition of Alexander Pope: The Major Works, charting the Augustan poet’s biting satire, anxieties, and self-fashioning.
Ian Penman on Anthony Burgess: Penman re-evaluates Burgess’s 1966 espionage satire Tremor of Intent, dissecting its baroque style and its uneasy relationship with James Bond.
Art & Culture
Columns and Short Cuts: Additional pieces include Peter Geoghegan on democratic funding reform and Blake Morrison on Luke Kennard’s poetry collection Black Bag.
Em Hogan on Hujar and Thek: Hogan reviews Andrew Durbin’s dual biography The Wonderful World that Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, profiling the turbulent lives of the photographer and artist against 1960s–1980s New York and the onset of the AIDS crisis.
Dexter Dalwood on Jasper Johns: Dalwood contributes a review of Johns’s exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao, evaluating his enduring postwar artistic motifs and printmaking legacy.
For Dan Rees, the maritime ‘flag of convenience’ system provides an apt metaphor for the expansion abroad of ‘flagship’ museum franchises
When experience becomes the primary value of the art encounter, the subject is increasingly encouraged to perceive themselves as an accumulator of experiences.
Dangerous Times
Barbara Kruger interviewed by John Douglas Millar
My work was hot, not cool. The address was forthright rather than withholding. I was never cool enough to be cool. That’s still the case.
On Truth Decay
Francis Frascina looks at the ways artists can combat the decay of truth in reportage and representation
Processes of monetised personal interiorisation symbolise the shift from what Frankfurt School theorists warned about the addictive ‘drug’ of corporate television in the 1950s and 1960s to contemporary algorithmic induced ‘doom scrolling’ – all fertile ground for truth decay.
Thirty robots made up the first class at a robot school in Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang Province. After more than two months of training, four have graduated and landed formal jobs.
When the idea of the new Long March experience was first presented to me, I was enthusiastic. From early June through late July, we would spend six weeks following part of the route of the original Long March (1934-36) in honor of the journey’s conclusion 90 years ago this October.
The Long March was one of the seminal historical events of the 20th century. It had a transformative impact on the history of modern China.
At the World Intelligence Expo 2026 in Tianjin, I emphasized in my speech the principle that should guide every conversation about artificial intelligence (AI) today, namely without transparent, responsible, and ethical governance frameworks, the transformative potential of AI would be undermined by fragmentation and mistrust. The world now stands at a crossroads. A unified global AI governance framework remains elusive, so the question is no longer whether the EU and China should cooperate, but where and how they can do so most effectively.
