The Global Brotherhood of Commanders: A Field Guide to the Men (and Occasionally Women) Who Tell Everyone Else What to Do By Dave’s Foreign Desk, somewhere between a G-7 cocktail reception and a bunker in Burkina Faso There is a moment, usually around 2:00 a.m. local time, when every commander on earth—regardless of flag, ideology,…
CINCINNATI, OHIO—Somewhere between the Mekong Delta and the Ohio River Valley, the word “Bengal” mutates like a passport-forged variant. In Delhi it conjures visions of Royal Bengal tigers padding through Sunderbans mud; in London it evokes the 1970s curry houses of Brick Lane; and here, inside a $650-million riverside coliseum, it refers to a football…
Jane McDonald and the Curious Soft Power of a Cruise-Ship Chanteuse Dave’s Locker – International Desk, somewhere between the buffet and the lifeboats If you mention “Jane McDonald” in a Manchester pub, someone will involuntarily hum “Cruise,” raise an imaginary piña colada, and reminisce about 1998—the year Britain briefly convinced itself that nautical karaoke could…
Jennifer Lopez and the Global Mirage of Endless Reinvention By Our Correspondent, drinking airport coffee that tastes like geopolitics Somewhere over the Atlantic, the in-flight entertainment system lurches into life and there she is again: Jennifer Lopez, ageless and suspiciously pore-free, gyrating through a medley that has already been adopted as the unofficial soundtrack in…
The Gentle Art of Global Domination: How Alan Titchmarsh Conquered the World One Petunia at a Time While the planet burns and democracy crumbles like overbaked shortbread, there’s something almost subversive about a 74-year-old British gardener who has quietly become more influential than most world leaders. Alan Titchmarsh—yes, that affable chap with the perpetual tan…
KANSAS, USA—From a distance of 6,000 miles, the place looks like a sociological petri dish left too long under the heat-lamp of good intentions. Europeans who can’t tell Topeka from TikTok still speak of Kansas in the hushed tones normally reserved for extinct volcanoes: it blew once—something about The Wizard of Oz, wheat, and the…
The Global Village Has a New Village Explainer – and He’s Still Not Sure Why We’re Here By our Special Correspondent, currently self-isolating with a thermometer in one hand and a passport in the other From a cramped flat in São Paulo to a yurt on the Mongolian steppe, the name “Brian Cox” now travels…
Andy Burnham, the self-styled “King of the North,” has spent the past decade perfecting the rare political art of sounding rebellious while still cashing Whitehall’s cheques. To the outside world, the Mayor of Greater Manchester is a municipal curiosity—somewhere between a regional mascot and a low-budget Game of Thrones extra. Yet in an era when…
Andrew Garfield: The Accidental Citizen of Nowhere in Particular by our bureau chief, still jet-lagged from a red-eye out of Reykjavík The first thing you learn on the international circuit is that every passport contains a small, invisible clause: “May be upgraded to brand ambassador at any moment, no refund.” Andrew Garfield, that angular Brit…
Sarah Pochin and the Quiet Collapse of Sovereignty A dispatch from the frontlines of a world that can’t be bothered to care By the time Sarah Pochin’s name trickled into the global feed—wedged between footage of a burning Bangladeshi textile market and a TikTok of a Finnish prime-ministerial dance-off—most capitals had already moved on to…
Liechtenstein: The Micro-Monarchy Quietly Running the World’s Off-Balance Sheet By the time you finish this sentence, Liechtenstein’s 39,000 citizens will have collectively earned another million francs, most of it from accounts whose owners would rather you not know their names. That’s the speed at which the planet’s sixth-smallest sovereign state moves money—fast enough to make…
Luanda, Thursday – Somewhere between the oil rigs and the rusting Soviet apartment blocks, Angola has quietly become the punch-line the world pretends it isn’t in on. Once the Cold War’s favorite proxy slug-fest, the country now exports two commodities in bulk: crude petroleum and sardonic lessons in how to survive the twenty-first century with…
