The New Yorker (May 27, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features
Sergio García Sánchez’s “Scoot” – The artist depicts the thrill of leaning into summer in the city.
The People’s Commencement at Columbia
It’s 1968 all over again, as New York Ivy Leaguers flip the script and stage an unofficial counter-graduation ceremony at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
The Bronx Cheers—Mostly—for Trump
Biden’s a pedophile; Trump’s a fascist; the maga Hasidim have to get their act together—and other sentiments spewed at the former President’s rally in Crotona Park.
How to Pick Stocks Like You’re in Congress
The team at Autopilot, an app that lets you copy the trades of Nancy Pelosi’s husband (up forty-five per cent last year) or Dan Crenshaw (up forty-one), choose their newest offering.
DW Euromaxx (May 25, 2024): Beyond Amsterdam’s famed canals, bikes, coffee shops, and the Red-Light District lies a deeper narrative of what it’s like to grow up and be young in the Dutch capital.
CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:30 Living arrangements 01:56 Education 03:11 Heritage 04:24 Social life & hobbies 05:39 Legal milestones 06:55 Red-Light District 07:25 The pros and cons of living in Amsterdam
Meet Cosmo, a 19-year-old student and native Amsterdammer, as he shares his perspective on life in the city: how he spends his free time, gets around, and how Amsterdam has shaped him. #Amsterdam#Netherlands#YoungEuropeans
Naturally, I too will be staying at the Bayerischer Hof. —Franz Kafka
The Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich is an indestructible fortress of Mitteleuropean culture where tour guides like to pause. Richard Wagner repaired to the Hof for tea after his opera performances in Munich; Sigmund Freud fell out with Carl Jung in the Hof over the status of the libido; Kafka stayed at the Hof when he gave his second, and final, public reading to a hostile audience. A decade later, Hitler learned to crack crabs at the Hof under the supervision of a society hostess, and Joseph Goebbels counted on its rooms for a good night’s rest. The Hof weathered the revolutions of 1848; it withstood the revolution of 1918–19, in which the socialist leader Kurt Eisner was assassinated in front of the hotel and Bavaria briefly became a workers’-council republic; it rebuffed the Nazis’ attempts to buy it in the Thirties; and, after it was nearly destroyed by an Allied bombing raid in 1944, it was reconstructed with beaverlike industry. Today its wide façade of three hundred and thirty-seven rooms imposes itself over the small Promenadeplatz like a slice of meringue cake too large for its plate. Every February, hundreds of diplomats, politicians, academics, and arms dealers convene here for the Munich Security Conference.
Money—where it comes from, where it goes—was on my mind as I drove from Brooklyn to Philadelphia last fall, a Friday the thirteenth. I spent most of the trip on a Zoom call with my wife and our doula, discussing what combination of night nurses, babysitters, and nannies we’d need come the birth of our twins, our second and third sons. Nary a dollar figure was uttered, seemingly out of respect, just as those attending a funeral avoid naming the actual cause of death.
This year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show is poised to celebrate the unfolding freshness and energy of deciduous woods in May, as Kathryn Bradley-Hole discovers
Beneath the boughs
Garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith is returning to Chelsea’s Main Avenue for the first time in 14 years for the National Garden Scheme, reveals Joanna Fortnam
‘When the ass begins to bray, surely rain will come that day’
It’s raining ancient folklore and proverbs as John Lewis-Stempel relies on jumping trout, croaking frogs and chirping crickets to predict the great British weather
My art is in the garden
Carla Passino examines how the brushstrokes of Monet, Turner, Klimt and Canaletto are providing colour and inspiration at Chelsea
All I need is the air that I breathe
Cathryn Spence airs the story of how—250 years ago—Joseph Priestley ‘discovered’ oxygen at Bowood House in Wiltshire
Cindy Sughrue’s favourite painting
The director of London’s Charles Dickens Museum picks a classic snapshot of the capital’s skyline
The legacy
Bess of Hardwick was the first of many influential Chatsworth women, as Kate Green learns
A timeless view
George Plumptre admires the simple beauty of the gardens at Pusey House in Oxfordshire
Seating plans
What makes a comfortable garden seat, asks Tiffany Daneff
Sitting pretty
Amelia Thorpe seeks out crafted benches to suit every garden
The cutting-garden diaries
In the final part of her series, Anna Brown is focused on harvesting
A lily among weeds
Clive Aslet lauds the enduring influence of the prolific Victorian architect George Edmund Street
Slugging it out
Marianne Taylor is captivated by the curious beauty of molluscs
Mane stay
Deborah Nash visits the last British firm creating horsehair fabric
Out and About
The Royal Countryside Fund reception at Fortnum & Mason
Interiors
Amelia Thorpe takes a look at six of the best WOW!house creations
A brush with sparkles
Hetty Lintell is wowed by jewels celebrating the National Gallery
Kitchen garden cook
The arrival of new-season carrots is applauded by Melanie Johnson
Native herbs
John Wright is playing with fire as he investigates horseradish
Sweet chamomile, good times never seemed so good
Deborah Nicholls-Lee dreams of dainty white flowers and a fragrant lawn that never needs mowing
Falstaff reimagined
Sir Ian McKellen lends a ‘silvering dignity’ to Shakespeare’s famed roisterer, finds Michael Billington
The New Yorker (May 13, 2024): The new issue‘s cover featuresBarry Blitt’s “Class of 2024” – The campus tensions take center stage.
An Israeli Newspaper Presents Truths Readers May Prefer to Avoid
Haaretz consistently attempts to wrestle with the realities of what is going on in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.
By David Remnick
A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?
Colleagues reportedly called Lucy Letby an “angel of death,” and the Prime Minister condemned her. But, in the rush to judgment, serious questions about the evidence were ignored.
This spring, Barbara and Joe, a retired couple in their 60s, sat down with me at a bistro in suburban Connecticut to talk about their relationship. That they were sitting there together at all was something of a triumph. In the past few days, they had hurled at each other the kinds of accusations that couples make when they are on the brink of mutual destruction. They were bruised from the words that had been exchanged, and although they sat close to each other, their energy was quiet and heavy.
Elections for the European parliament are less than a month away and far-right parties are predicted to make significant gains in many of the bloc’s 27 member states. The dire shortage of housing, leading to rising rents and property prices, is becoming a unifying focus for voters’ discontent with their current political leaders.
The issue has sparked protests from Amsterdam to Prague and Milan, as the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, Jon Henley, reports. The data is undeniably worrying as young Europeans spend up to 10 times an average salary on rent and mortgage payments, and big cities from the Baltic states to the Iberian peninsula have registered average property price rises of close to 50%. As a result more EU residents live with their parents for longer and put off life-decisions later into adulthood.
While housing does not fall within MEPs’ remit, it is a visible locus for the sense of social unease that has beset the whole bloc and has become a pivot for the far right to turn on racialised minorities. But as European community affairs correspondent Ashifa Kassam discovers, it is those communities that are doubly penalised through discrimination from landlords who, research has shown, turn away potential renters with “foreign” surnames. The political and social ramifications of the housing crisis in Europe is mirrored elsewhere across the globe and is a subject we will return to in the Guardian Weekly in this year of elections.
Mrs Beeton’s recipes are still followed more than a century later. Kate Green raises a spoon to the first domestic goddess
This is how we brew it
Good coffee, companionship and delectable cakes are on offer in the cafés of the Cots-wolds. Ben Lerwill takes a sip
The magnificent seven
On the 75th birthday of Badminton Horse Trials, Kate Green salutes seven heroes of eventing’s premier weekend
Mere moth or merveille du jour?
The names of our butterflies and moths owe their artistic overtones to a golden group, discovers Peter Marren
Heaven is a place on earth
From Sissinghurst to Charleston, gardens offered the women of the Bloomsbury group refuge, solace and inspiration. Deborah Nicholls-Lee enjoys a stroll
Jane Tuckwell’s favourite painting
The event director of Badminton Horse Trials chooses a hunting scene with personal resonance
Where are the food targets?
Farmers should be allowed to prioritise producing food, believes Minette Batters
An air of homely distinction
The Anglo-American artistic circle of Russell House in Broadway, Worcestershire, lives on through its current incumbents, John Martin Robinson is pleased to say
Blow the froth off
Spring has donned its lacy garb as cow parsley flowers. Vicky Liddell walks the umbellifer lanes
There is no sting in this tale
The fearsome scorpion fly is straight out of science-fiction central casting, says Ian Morton
Angels in the house
Jo Caird marvels at a rare survival in a Cotswold church
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell packs her case and runs away to the airport
Interiors
Curl up and get cosy with the comfiest bedroom accessories, chosen by Amelia Thorpe
A haunt of ancient peace
Recently renovated, the gardens of Iford Manor in Wiltshire are as idyllic today as they were when Harold Peto created the Italianate design, marvels Tiffany Daneff
Native herbs
John Wright adds tonic and raises a glass to the juniper
I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly
Quivering, crystal-clear savoury jelly is all grown up. Tom Parker Bowles braves the wobble
Dulce et decorum est
Michael Sandle is still fighting the good fight through his art as he turns 88, reveals John McEwen
Put some graphite in your pencil
A trick of Cumbrian geology led to worldwide fame for Keswick, scribbles Harry Pearson
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious