123rd Officer Cadet Training Regiment, Royal Artillery, 1942
A group portrait of the R.A. from 1942, an inauspicious time to go through training
The continuing glory of the New York Review of Books
The New York Review was always great, but it may be even better under new editor Ian Buruma
Where you can ignore the US ambassador
What presidential donors have to give to get a vacation spot ambassadorship
Rendition and torture: how it happened
Everyone knows by now that the US and UK tortured captives. That should still shock us
Zadie Smith on libraries and the state of the state
How did something as fine and useful as a public library become an ideological issue?
Queen Victoria’s journals now online
The Empress of India’s 43,765 pages: a record of Britain at its peak that you can’t access for long
Arctic Monkeys still rock
They were young and massively hyped when they started. But there’s no denying they’re great
Finally, propaganda I can believe in
The UK Foreign Office makes a stout defense of multiculturalism, just in time for the Olympics
For those who think London’s going to hell
Good news: it has been going to hell for 50 years, since the knife fights between Mods and Rockers
Arab arts and political radicals in London this weekend
And there are cool Arab arts of all sorts in London this summer
The unlikely face of hip-hop
Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop explored the boundaries of sound
1956: Egypt claims Suez, a move called the biggest threat to world peace
A 1956 newsreel announcing that Egypt’s president Nasser has nationalized the Suez Canal, a move it calls the biggest threat to world peace