What Happened to Venezuela?
Chávez came to adopt all the attributes political scientists associate with authoritarianism. He sacrificed institutional checks and balances for political expediency, demonised his opponents both at home and in Washington with colourful bombast, was buoyed at rallies by emotional call-and-response repartee with his red-shirted supporters, and governed as if he were running an extended political campaign. In this sense, Chávez could be placed squarely within Latin America’s long populist tradition. What made him unique, and his long rule so unusual for a populist, is that he never deviated. More
Our National Hodgepodge
Unacknowledged both by Leavers and Remainers, EU membership has served to disguise the messy contradictions of Britain’s multinational state. The uninhibited restoration of parliamentary sovereignty – in this context, the brute expression of English dominance – is no solution. In recent decades, the EU has helped to ease tensions at national borders as well as serving as a safety net for devolution. Some kind of substitute – or, more likely, an array of alternatives – will be required, if Brexit is not to bring about the disintegration of our anomalous early modern hodgepodge. More
Death at the Banquet
Although the events described here occurred only about three months ago, the man’s name escapes me. I’m not at all certain my memory is correct, and of course no one will confirm my recollections. Who wants to remember what happened? Like me, everyone wants to forget. At the time I was working in the western part of a remote province in China, under an arrangement intended to allow government officials from developed areas to work in economically backward regions. I was frequently invited to banquets. More
Ida John
Among her fellow students at the Slade School were some of the 14 children of the wealthy Salaman family whose father had made a fortune in the ‘feather boom’ of the 1880s when fabulous prices were paid for ostrich plumes. Ida became engaged to Clement Salaman. She liked him perfectly well. He was reliable, suitable and fond of her. They might have been happy enough had not her ‘beautiful warm face’ caught the eye of Augustus John. Then she knew what it was to have a grand passion and to be on the horns of a dilemma. More
