LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – MARCH 19, 2026 PREVIEW

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features Nicholas Spice – Schubert’s Imagination; Daniella Shreir on Chantal Akerman; Tom Stevenson – Death of an Ayatollah; Joanna Biggs – Solvej Balle’s Time Loop….

Iran, Week One

The attack launched on Iran by the US and Israel on 28 February was a textbook case of international aggression, justified in only the most cursory fashion by fictional Iranian threats and undertaken with no clear aims and no clear demands or terms. In announcing the war Donald Trump described it as a wholesale attack on both government and state. The US and Israel would ‘raze their missile industry to the ground’ and ‘annihilate their navy’. Benjamin Netanyahu called on Iranians to ‘come out to the streets and finish the job’. By Tom Stevenson

Mummy’s Favourite

 The late queen can be held responsible for much, but nobody could accuse her of seeming to enjoy her role. For the Yorks, however, enjoyment was everything, and the notion of royal sacrifice, argu­ably a red herring in the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was finally obliterated by their act­ions. By Andrew O’Hagan

Marlowe’s Betrayals

As Stephen Greenblatt’s Dark Renaissance shows despite itself, it is not Marlowe’s life story that we still need, but his plays and poems: we might well want to avert our eyes from the bathetically dismal life of the man who wrote them. By Michael Dobson

Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie

Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

Andrew O’Hagan

The Spectator World Magazine – March 16, 2026

THE SPECTATOR WORLD: The latest issue features ‘The Greater Game’ – Trump’s ultimate target in this war is China says Geoffrey Cain…

Trump’s ultimate target in this war is China

Geoffrey Cain

The United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Khamenei, and Xi Jinping’s decade-long project to build an alternative to the American-led order died with him. For years, Beijing quietly assembled a network of dictatorships and client states designed to blunt American power. Iran supplied China with cheap oil and kept Washington bogged down in the Middle

The Iran war has exacerbated the failure of European energy policies

Daniel McCarthy

The history of the global trading system is a story of narrow and vulnerable waterways: the Suez and Panama Canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Straits of Dover and the Skagerrak, which defends the entrance to the Baltic. But none has the power to seize up the global economy as much as the Strait of…..

I spent 25 years fighting neocons. Then Trump became one

Like everyone, I’m glued to the news coming out of Iran. I’m experiencing some depression, as one might, upon realizing that much of what one has worked on for 25 years has suddenly gone up in smoke, destroyed when Donald Trump discovered he was pretty much a neocon after all. Like everyone else, I have…

America’s last war in the Middle East

Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. That might sound wildly optimistic, but what it really means is that war with Iran has been decades in the making. If the mission succeeds, it will mark the end of an era.

Inside MAGA’s meltdown over Iran

Freddy Gray

When President George W. Bush invaded Mesopotamia in 2003, everybody laughed at Comical Ali, the bespectacled Iraqi information minister who kept insisting that the American “rats” were doomed as Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed around him. The world moved on. Iran is not Iraq, as President Donald Trump’s supporters are so fond of saying, and Bush-eraOwen Matthews

Will Turkey intervene in Iran?

With the exception so far of a single missile intercepted over Turkish airspace and a strike on an Azeri-controlled territory near the Iranian border, Tehran has so far declined to mess with the Turks, and for good reasons. Turkey is a member of NATO and attacking it would trigger Article 5 mutual defense measures. And

The Nation Magazine – APRIL 2026 Preview

The Nation

THE NATION MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Trump’s New World Disorder’ – His stranglehold is producing planetary chaos and destruction…

How Marco Rubio Went From Neocon “It” Boy to Top MAGA Lieutenant

Rubio’s transformation may say as much about neoconservatism as it does about the man himself.

The Iran War Is a Disaster for Gaza

How the crisis leaves Gaza’s 2 million people more friendless, isolated, and vulnerable than ever before.

Mohammed R. Mhawish

George Packer’s Liberal Imagination

What happens when liberalism’s crisis is made into a fable? 

The Greatest Love Is Grieving

I spent years as a labor organizer. Marguerite Duras’s war novel taught me that the strongest fighters are always the women hurting the most.

Haley Mlotek

THE NEW YORK TIMES – TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2026

Hegseth Says Today Will Be Most ‘Intense’ Day of Air War

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “the most fighters, the most bombers” would be deployed.

Trump’s War in Iran, and Rising Gas Prices, Collide With Midterm Agenda

The attack on Iran has led to a surge in energy prices at a moment when the cost of living is a major issue heading into the fall elections.

New Supreme Leader Inherits Sprawling, Secretive Office That Dominates Iran

U.S. Solar Installations Fell in 2025 as Trump Attacked Clean Energy

More solar energy was added to U.S. grids than any other technology, but the amount installed fell by 14 percent, according to a new report.

Two Supreme Court Justices Debate Handling of Trump Emergency Cases