Monocle on Saturday (August 17, 2024): Why are the Swiss Alps the perfect setting for creativity?
Join us for a special programme from the St Moritz Makers & Shakers festival as we meet Swiss high jewellery designer Angelo de Luca, yoga instructor Viviana Ferrari and Rémy Bailloux, co-founder of Garde-Manger patisserie and delicatessen. With Monocle’s Tyler Brûlé, Sophie Grove and Nic Monisse.
1 Spotlight | On the road: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz re-energise Democrats The US vice-president and her running mate have hit the ground running in their campaign for the White House. Can they keep the momentum going, asks Lauren Gambino.
2 Technology | The fragile world of underwater internet cables Deep-sea wires are the veins of the modern world. What if something were to happen to them? Jonathan Yerushalmy investigates.
3 Feature | Beautiful, bruising and complex female friendships Ahead of her new book examining women’s friendships, the Observer’s Rachel Cooke reflects on two pivotal ones of her own, as well as some notable literary attachments.
4 Opinion | The Olympics showed France’s far right what true patriotism is all about Despite a febrile political backdrop, the Paris Games reminded a nation of what it means to be proud of one’s country, says French sports writer Philippe Auclair.
5 Culture | The second act of Sam Neill He is one of the world’s most famous actors, but the New Zealander – whose cancer is thankfully in remission – can still go to Starbucks without anyone recognising him, finds Zoe Williams.
Monocle on Saturday (August 10, 2024): Live from Maison Allianz. Andrew Mueller is joined by Olympic historian Philip Barker to discuss the legacy of this year’s Olympic Games, and Joachim Roncin, director of design for Paris 2024.
Plus: Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, joins from Gstaad, our roving Olympics correspondent, Kieran Pender, talks about the few marquee events remaining and we explore France’s best-kept tourist secrets. Allianz is a Worldwide Insurance Partner of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
London Review of Books (LRB) – August 7 , 2024: The latest issue features ‘Henry James Hot-Air Balloon’ – “The Prefaces” by Henry James; Trivialized to Death – “Reading Genesis” by Marilynne Robinson; Different for Girls By Jean McNicol…
The first time the man heard God, he uprooted his entire life, though he was very old. Then God appeared to him in person, an event which would embarrass later thinkers. God made the man an impossible promise in the shape of a son. His wife was ninety, and she laughed. When the child arrived, it was hardly unreasonable to think it a miracle. They named the child after the laughter.
In 1904 Henry James’s agent negotiated with the American publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons to produce a collected edition of his works. The New York Edition of the Novels and Tales of Henry James duly appeared in 1907-9. It presented revised texts of both James’s shorter and longer fiction, with freshly written prefaces to each volume. It didn’t include everything: ‘I want to quietly disown a few things by not thus supremely adopting them,’ as James put it. The ‘disowned’ works included some early gems such as The Europeans. The labour of ‘supremely adopting’ the stuff he still thought worthy was grinding. He worked on the new prefaces, which he described as ‘freely colloquial and even, perhaps, as I may say, confidential’ (though James’s notion of the ‘freely colloquial’ is perhaps not everyone’s) during the years 1905 to 1909. In some respects, the venture was not a success. ‘Vulgarly speaking,’ James said of the New York Edition, ‘it doesn’t sell.’
A week before the start of the Paris Olympics, Shoko Miyata, the 19-year-old captain of the Japanese women’s gymnastics team, was forced to withdraw from the competition by her national association. She had been reported to the Japan Gymnastics Association for smoking and drinking (on separate occasions, once for each offence). The president of the JGA, Tadashi Fujita, announced that Miyata had been sent home, and bowed deeply.
The Darién Gap was once considered impassable. Now hundreds of thousands of migrants are risking treacherous terrain, violence, hunger, and disease to travel through the jungle to the United States.
Iranian Insiders Warn That Attacking Israel Is a Trap
Some say a big war will help the country’s enemies. But is anyone listening?
President Biden has proposed radical changes to the Court. Reviewing them is a reminder of why reform is so hard, despite dissatisfaction and a wealth of ideas.
Julie Benko, who hit it big after going on in place of Beanie Feldstein in “Funny Girl,” has a lot of advice for the Vice-President, now that she’s done with waiting in the wings.
By Zach Helfand
What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want?
The third-party Presidential candidate has a troubled past, a shambolic campaign, and some surprisingly good poll numbers.
Fifty years after Shirley Chisholm ran for the Presidency, we find ourselves yet again questioning the durability of outmoded presumptions about race and gender. By Jelani Cobb
The Republican National Convention and the Iconography of Triumph
In Milwaukee, with a candidate who had just cheated death, the resentment rhetoric of Trump’s 2016 campaign gave way to an atmosphere of festive certainty. By Anthony Lane
Gillian Anderson’s Sex Education
She became famous playing buttoned-up Agent Scully. But in midlife her characters often have a strong erotic charge—and now she’s edited “Want,” a book of sexual fantasies. By Rebecca Mead
Monocle on Saturday (July 27, 2024): Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, and Monocle’s Deputy Head of Radio, Tom Webb, join Georgina Godwin from Paris to reflect on the Olympic Opening Ceremony, and look ahead to the games.
Plus, the CEO of the Affordable Art Fair, Will Ramsey, talks about the global art market and building community with artists and galleries. Finally, politics expert and lecturer, Marta Lorimer, joins Georgina to talk about French politics and her view on the Olympics, as well as Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, and – is Kamala “brat”?.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious