The intellectual, moral and historic confusions that mark the contemporary age - and the middle east as much as any other region - make the loss of thoughtful and humane
The world's financial press has a new obsession to succeed the "sub-prime mortgage" craze of autumn 2007: "sovereign wealth funds", those state-backed investment bodies
The announcement of Fidel Castro's serious intestinal illness at the end of July 2006, and the occasion of the Cuban leader's 80th birthday on 13 August,
A controversy over the relationship of what is termed sharia or "Islamic law" to wider legal systems was ignited on 7 February 2008 from an unlikely source: an
The consequences of political assassinations - what in Spanish are termed magnicidios - are variable and unpredictable. Some radically change history and inaugurate a new phase in the politics of
The debate on the future of American power – and what is increasingly (even casually) referred to as the American “empire” – is almost as old as the United States itself. It
A dark, rainy, early autumnal, 6am outside my hotel on the pavement of Calle Goya is perhaps not the most obvious place or time to begin an encounter with what
Over the past three years, the accidents of academic travel and a certain curiosity about historical sites have taken me to most, if not all, of the places in the
On the three-and-a-half-hour flight eastwards from Rome to Larnaca, I re-immerse myself in the details of the "Cyprus question". As I read again the half-truths, self-indulgent rhetoric and
The association of the Basque country with political (and often violent) conflict in the eyes of much of the world is at first sight belied by the sense of tranquil
The killing of seven Spanish tourists in the Arabian state of Yemen on 2 July 2007 is a terrible and tragic event, for the victims and their families, for the
In the last few weeks Lebanon and Palestine have been the scene of dramatic and most unsettling events, from the outbreak on 20 May 2007 of heavy fighting between the
