THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 2.23.25 Issue features Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg on the Murdochs’ succession drama; David Yaffe-Bellany on the cryptocurrency scam that turned a small community on itself; Ismail Muhammad on the comedian Roy Wood Jr….
Harper’s Magazine (February 19, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Round Two – Trump’s Futile War Against The Deep State; Listening for the Future of Music; RAchel Cusk on Marin Amis and The Softer Side of American Conspiracy Theories…
Kate Green celebrates the Revd Gilbert White, the original ecologist whose 1789 book on flora and fauna has never been out of print
Mad as a box of frogs
Our amphibious friends were once thought to possess mystical powers and they now aid the advance of medicine, as Ian Morton discovers
The ghost of golden daffodils
David Jones traces the fall and rise of the Tenby daffodil — all but extinct in the wild, but making a return as a cultivated bloom
The lure of Venice
Matthew Dennison investigates Britain’s long-standing love affair with the Italian maritime republic, fuelled by Canaletto’s enchanting, kaleidoscopic vedute
Playing the fool
Who could have foreseen the influence of tarot cards down the ages? Deborah Nicholls-Lee delves into decks and divination
Dr Ximena Fuentes Torrijo’s favourite painting
The Ambassador of Chile picks a vast, dreamlike Surrealist work that portrays a turbulent world.
A sense of delight
John Goodall marvels at the outstanding array of new and restored buildings on the grand Aldourie estate in Inverness-shire
Snakes and snails and puppy-dog tales
Matthew Dennison pays tribute to Peter and Iona Opie, who pre-served much-loved folklore and fairy tales for future generations
The good stuff
Work out in style with Hetty Lintell’s elegant exercise picks
Interiors
Amelia Thorpe shares the best of London Design Week wares, plus an elegant room with a view
Shaping the view
Tiffany Daneff admires the vista of rural Northamptonshire from the delightful Modernist garden created for a converted cart house
Foraging
Listen in as John Wright shares his thoughts on wood ears, the fungus with a gelatinous texture
Arts & antiques
Thomas Girtin’s exquisite landscapes were a match for Turner before the artist was cut down in his prime, reveals Carla Passino
History triumphs over invention
A brilliantly acted historical play conquers overproduced Greek mythology for Michael Billington
We’re just over three weeks into the second Donald Trump administration, and the pace of events both inside and outside the US has been dizzying and unprecedented.
Many of us have been alarmed by Trump’s shocking pronouncements on the Israel-Gaza war, trade tariffs and territorial claims on Greenland and Panama. But inside America, an equally startling transformation has been taking place.
Aided by the tech billionaire Elon Musk, Trump has moved swiftly to fire critics, reward allies, punish media, gut the federal government and exploit presidential immunity. Yet much of the blueprint comes not from Trump’s own policy team, but from a power-consolidation playbook established over the past decade by the Hungarian authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán.
Marion Milner believed in the importance of creative fulfilment (the ‘genius’ inside every one of us) and offered a kind of manual for finding it. From her earliest self-experiments through decades of psychoanalytic practice she took seriously the need to feel ‘real in living’, and tried to theorise the therapeutic potential of aesthetic experience, however minimal.
William had spent most of his life in the care of the state. His story was one of intergenerational trauma, common to many families in the West of Scotland, and of the lies Scotland tells itself about its treatment of its most vulnerable young people.
Angela Merkel’s low-key, unflappable persona makes it easy to overlook how extraordinary her story is. A life composed of such unlike elements has never been possible before and will never be so again, at least in Europe.
While few would question Messiaen’s importance in 20th-century music, his religious modernism has always been met with accusations of idolatry, inauthenticity and bad taste.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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