Sitemap - 2023 - This Week, Those Books

Holiday spirit sweeps the whole world

In the little town of Bethlehem, they grieve

Europe debates its destiny – and Ukraine

Happy 75th, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

COP28: Getting the climate party started

LA Auto Show and the future of cars

Migrants are in the spotlight, again

Abortion is in focus around the world

The state of Turkey, 100 years on

About me

Disney at 100: Mickey and multiculturalism

Gaza: Forced displacement

Israel-Palestine: Tears and fears

Armenian exodus and the pains of history

India-Canada row: Risks of dissent

Half-time at the UNGA games

What to know about Fashion Week 2023

Asean, G20: Summits are peak diplomacy

Why is the Pope in Mongolia?

Welcome

BRICS for a new world order

Women's football: Girl power summer

Saving the Amazon rainforest, 'Earth's lungs'

Is the world's green consensus going dark?

Russia-Africa summit and blood bonds

Oppenheimer's dharma and the atomic bomb

Thank you, dear Readers

Fireworks in France: Bastille Day and riots

Get smarter, faster about America’s 247th birthday

Dear Reader

What to know about Russia, revolts and 1917

Ecocide and Cormac McCarthy’s words

What to know about 'dictator chic'

Indian food's poor representation among American restaurants is not a malaise

50 years on, Madhur Jaffrey's Indian cookbook is useful metric for America

Degrowth: What On Earth Is That?

John Wayne's film, The Alamo, was vital to the myths about Texas

Slutty vegans in the land of big beef

No better way than the train to see America the beautiful

Biden administration gives $570 m to rail crossing safety projects

'Amtrak Joe', Pete Buttigieg and America's train revolution

'Amtrak Joe' will propel America's trains into the 21st century

America's train network is preparing for a high-speed future

Southwest Chief, Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited…American trains are grand

Decolonising the Alamo narrative is long overdue

Should we remember the Alamo and just forget the myths?

Glorious myths about the Alamo 'sacred shine' draw millions every year

Why BoJo’s Dallas dinner with Trump didn’t make the NYT

Texas attorney general is no lone star despite legal woes

'Please check you don't have a firearm in your carry-on'

Marketing UFOs and mysteries in New Mexico

Aliens, flying saucers and a spaceport in New Mexico

Haunted trails through the American southwest

Seasons greetings: It's always 'Christmas' in Santa Fe

In Santa Fe, 'Christmas' means red and green chiles

Alert for undocumented migrants in northern Arizona

Overland Expo 2023 has Flagstaff, Arizona buzzing

Food and nurturing on Taos Pueblo: A photo diary

Taos Pueblo’s new church still throbs with old colonial traumas

In Taos Pueblo, the future fuses with the past

In Taos Pueblo, 1000-year-old mud houses with propane and mobile wifi

GUEST POST: Macron's zombie Gaullism

Native wisdom: The North American Indian

Prepping for the American southwest

Up, up and away...

Newly bold talk about republicanism and reparations

Are Indians still obsessed with the Raj?

Right royal tamasha: New season of the Crown begins

'Indian nationalists are still obsessed with the Raj'

Coronation countdown II: Look who’s celebrating

Don't mention the coronation

Coronation countdown: Patriotism or the profit motive?

France's old world view of work may be very new age-y. Or not...

Shouldn't the French get with the script?

GUEST POST: Macron's May Day blues

In the garden, shakkei 'borrows scenery' to frame, as would a photographer

The reason Ron DeSantis bangs his not very big drum on the big world stage

'We are not amused', India on Der Spiegel's cartoon of world's most populous nation

Is Joe Biden's choice of Kamala Harris a tick-the-box exercise?

Ukraine war: Talks can't aim to solve everything, everywhere all at once

Elon Musk's exquisite parody of impartiality?

How to end the Ukraine war

Expert opinion from Japan on the 'Indian century'

For the West, the 'Indian century' may have already begun

An 'Indian century'

What's your bet the EU will be in good shape on Jan 1, 2028?

Remind me again, what was the point of Joe Biden visiting Northern Ireland?

What's Hindi cinema's attitude to old age?

Hollywood is not obsessed with the elderly and dying…yet

GUEST POST: Why French cinema is fascinated with dying

What the Jack Teixeira intelligence leaks say about the state of American society

Psst...we're joining even more dots

Racism and the ugliness of Britain's increasingly diverse politics

Ukraine war re-positions ‘the heart of Europe’ more eastwards…in Poland

Please, do join me on Notes

How to boost a neighbourhood, simply but radically

20 years on, the false narrative of the Firdos Square Saddam statue toppling

As Trump was arraigned, a strange thing seemed to happen to Marjorie Taylor Greene

Sunak, in potholed northeast England, illustrates theory and practice of political change

Nitrous oxide ban: What the Dutch do in January, the Brits do in March

What happened in Manhattan was not a patch on events in the Midwest

Sanna Marin, Finland's international star and Northern Light, dims

Folk traditions are back, with bells on

Trump indictment and the problem with journalists writing for the history books

Rishi Sunak's Goldilocks migration strategy: 'Stop the boats' and 'start the legal' passage

'Indian' & 'Pakistani' walk into Brit high offices…What happens?

When Britain's King visited, Germany fondly recalled he's 'half German'

Humza Yousaf: 'Like a leader created by ChatGPT'

Let's not pooh pooh Utah laws that help parents keep their children safe online

This is not a photo but AI can pretend it is as it's now learnt to draw human hands

'Global China' conceit is only possible because of America's rising inability to do diplomacy

20 years on from war, a ground view of 'Iraq's first free and fair election'

Rahul Gandhi is a horsefly bite on the flank of the Modi's India

Do I get brownie or greenie points for starting small in the garden?

Rwanda: 'Beacon of hope' for Britain's Suella Braverman, if not for the migrants she deports

Britain is short of eggs, fresh veg…and news about the shortage

Laura Trevelyan and the gathering momentum for reparations

Diversity and Anglosphere: Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman run a familiar show

Eurocentricism and the AI video Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt made

The blog-oconomy and Joining the Dots: 11 years in a turning world

Barbados may give energy to reparations case

Think of war-torn Yemen and cheer China-brokered deal between Saudi and Iran

AI makes (a dog's) dinner

Two linguistics professors & an AI company head walk into a bar…

Reclaiming the streets from the 'horseless carriage' Benz built

Seeing the back of the Automobile Age

The car has had a good run from the first 'horseless carriage' to the Automobile Age

Stop worrying so much. ChatGPT won't make us writers irrelevant…yet

India too, like the US, makes distastefully pragmatic policy choices

'Dig for Brexit', literally

Brexit Britain: Grow-your-own-salad country Vs start-up nation

For ex-colonisers, those diamonds are, finally, not forever

Hope: A story of Ukrainian jugaad on war's first anniversary

'Dear Rishi'. Code words and cliches of British politics

Two Ukrainian women provide a lesson in the moral psychology of hope

'War and forgetting': Could Ukraine ever fall as much out of focus as Syria?

New tales of the South Pacific: Vanuatu's fight for climate justice

In Britain, let us root around for a salad

Right now, it's hard to rely on apps that claim to detect ChatGPT writing

One of the most accessible climate data maps possible just popped into my inbox

AI, your (overly) helpful, slightly batty editor?

Even some conservatives aren't buying Ron DeSantis's 'Florida blueprint' for America

Nicola Sturgeon's 'Jacinda Ardern moment'?

Heard about bot love? Bing, the homebreaker, turns it on its head

Nikki Haley: 'Proud daughter of Indian immigrants - not Black, not white…different'

Catastrophe Vs conflict: Turkey & Syria, one week on. Ukraine, nearly one year in

Metric of misery: Turkey & Syria, one week on. Ukraine, nearly one year in

History couples well with journalism, except when it doesn't. See Washington Post on Turkey quake - II

History couples well with journalism, except when it doesn't. See Washington Post on Turkey quake - I

Mandela wine, Gandhi mugs

The first Leopard tank arrived in Kyiv in a blizzard of rumours about graft

How now, thou chatbot Bard?

Yet another trigger warning…but just how troubling can Jane Austen be?

Row at Georgian khinkali stall in London brings home the ugliness of a faraway war

Are you ready for Boiled Raisin Cake as the Ukraine war drags on?

'How about ChatGPT writing a new Northern Ireland protocol?'

So Boris Johnson's comeback trail, like that of Liz Truss, runs through Washington, DC?

The AI bubble is like the Dutch tulip mania of the 1630s

Truss, who lost longevity battle to a lettuce, is on comeback trail through Washington, DC?

The logic of 'Brides of India' tourism tat

On his 75th death anniversary, the Mahatma as a marketing tool

India, Italy, Saudi, Colombia, Ethiopia haven't had a US ambassador for a year or more

The tanks-to-Ukraine story is not about America's 31 Abrams, but its heart

Mission Impossible for India's new Bond-style film to reset the country's political plot?

The egg-spensive scramble and what it says about our interconnected world

‘Heard the one about the Indian farmer and the AI bot?’ Microsoft’s Nadella told the story at Davos

If Davos didn't exist, would we have to invent it…as an email?

Davos trivia: One very dapper Bhutto, 3 Asian VIPs and an immortal WEF founder

Is Jacinda Ardern's short sharp goodbye a template or a telling sign of the times?

Jacinda Ardern's way of saying goodbye is as brusque as her plan for departure

Will Dr Clever Clogs, otherwise known as ChatGPT, be at Davos 2024?

'Davos is WEF…ie World Economic Failure'

Prince Harry, the conversational gambit for Everyman's dinner

AI magic: Turner painting of a 21st century Greenwich neighbourhood

Can this ChatGPT detector unerringly spot robotic idioms?

How to beat AI - for dummies. Hint: learn a craft

ChatGPT isn't Keats & won't reinvent the sonnet like Terrance Hayes…and that's fine

Light starts to dim on the oldie goldies' era of American politics

'Write a blog about the status of ChatGPT'

If insurrections were coffee, the barista would say Brazil had a January 6 Grande

Bolsonaro's behaviour throws a more flattering light on Trump…that's how bad it was

At Lula's inauguration, did Bolsonaro 'eat the last cannibal'?

2022 was cruel but there are reasons to be cheerful about 2023

The 2023 election calendar has some big ones

Sunak made history but UK's stature's getting unmade

Ightham Mote, one of Kent's 21 unpronounceable places

How Oxleas Woods became a 'line in the sand' for the environmental movement

Is Oxleas Woods threatened all over again?

Oxleas Woods: A still life in motion