The confusion surrounding the detention of migrants at the base and their sudden deportation shouldn’t be mistaken for a broader lack of planning. By Jonathan Blitzer
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…
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.
The UK’s status as a world leader in creative industries will be in peril if we fail to nurture art-and-design skills in our schools, argues Tristram Hunt
Let’s fall in love
Laura Parker investigates the boxing, croaking, crooning, dad dancing and even murder that passes for courtship ritual in the animal kingdom
Beauty and the blimp
Could a new airship designed in Britain deliver eco-friendly aviation, asks Charles Harris
Interiors
Amelia Thorpe picks out glass acts in world of garden rooms, greenhouses and orangeries
Soup-er charged
Tom Parker Bowles reveals how to beef up a boozy, hot-as-Hades French onion soup
A leap in the dark
The play of light and shade has long defined Western art. Michael Hall examines what Constable called ‘the chiaroscuro of nature’
The Duke of Richmond’s favourite painting
The owner of Goodwood picks a work that reflects the sporting history of the West Sussex estate
Three wishes for food and farming
Minette Batters calls for the UK to set a self-sufficiency target for producing its own food
Nature and nurture
In the final article of a three-part series, Tim Richardson ponders the innovation and imagination behind the wonderful grounds at Bramham Park, West Yorkshire
The legacy
Amie Elizabeth White applauds altruistic John Ritchie Findlay, who paved the way for Scotland’s National Portrait Gallery
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell backs a winner with a range of horseshoe jewellery
Light work
Tiffany Daneff is dazzled by the transformation of a dark London garden into a light-filled oasis
Foraging
Winter mushrooms are a rarity, but the striking velvet shank earns John Wright’s approval as a welcome addition to game pie
Arts & antiques
Carla Passino marvels at the masterpieces amassed by Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart as the works go on show in London
Wick me up before you go-go
The wick trimmer’s work was never done in candlelit times, discovers Matthew Dennison
The notes, taken after meetings with her psychiatrist, will be published in April as a book, “Notes to John.” They provide a raw account of her life, her work and her complex relationship with her daughter.
How Big Tech Mined Our Attention and Broke Our Politics
“Superbloom,” by Nicholas Carr, and “The Sirens’ Call,” by the MSNBC host Chris Hayes, argue that we are ill equipped to handle the infinite scroll of the information age.
A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present by Glenn Adamson
There have always been oracles, prophets, soothsayers, utopians, seers, or futurologists to make predictions about what will pass, and no matter how often they are wrong or discredited, humanity’s need remains.
Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism by Sebastian Smee
Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment – an exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, March 26–July 14, 2024, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., September 8, 2024–January 19, 2025
One hundred and fifty years after Impressionist paintings were first exhibited, it takes a certain effort to recover their original radicalism.
Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War by Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff
Bringing Silicon Valley’s drive for innovation to defense contracting has been a slow process, but the war in Ukraine has led tech firms to plunge into the war business.
Boomers Daily 