Opinion

Venice’s music, like the city itself, seems designed specifically to stir emotions There is the Venice of history, the city-state that was a world power for centuries and a musical powerhouse in the 17th century. Then there is the Venice of imagination, of canals, Carnival and decadent beauty – a characterisation fuelled above all by cinema. […]

The fate of a Dublin building which was the setting for a James Joyce story raises interesting questions about property closely associated with literature There are few cities that come to literary life in the manner of Dublin on Bloomsday. June 16 every year, the date in 1904 on which the events of James Joyce’s Ulysses unfold, […]

While ministerial sins make headlines here, ‘father of the EU’ Robert Schuman is on the path to canonisation. The founding father of the European Union may soon be getting a halo. Robert Schuman was the Luxembourg-born French statesman who founded the Council of Europe and masterminded the post-war plan for a single European steel and coal authority. It […]

Five years after she took office, we should resist a rose-tinted view of Theresa May’s time in Downing Street

Making it easier to get on the UK property ladder is a problem that can be solved… but only if politicians are willing to follow other nations, and hit theborn-lucky in the pocket. The Liberal Democrats apparently won the Chesham and Amersham by-election because of three factors: Brexit, HS2, and new planning regulations. Or to put it another […]

Will Self travels to Royal Tunbridge Wells to discover that in modern Britain, even a short journey takes you to another country In keeping with Multicultural Man’s distinctly rooted existence these past 18 months – something, no doubt, many New European readers can identify with – holidays have become a deeply strange phenomenon. Last year, […]

The vice-president faces challenges over voting rights and immigration on the southern border… as well as a battle for the country’s soul In the United States in the early years of this century, the Right and its racist elements created the Tea Party. Named after the Boston Tea Party, the new movement came into being […]

A seemingly unbridgeable chasm is splitting the continent between countries that see LGBT rights as the core of European identity of freedom and tolerance, and those that see them as a threat to that same identity

PETER TRUDGILL on the European language that lingered on Greenland, and another –  of sorts – that still thrives there Greenland is the largest island in the world. As is well known it also lies very far to the north. At its northernmost point, it is only about 500 miles from the North Pole. Iceland lies about 200 […]

Some surprise choices - and some usual suspects missing - as Jason Solomons selects the 50 greatest European movies

Readers have their say on the result of the Batley and Spen by-election

A reader explains their decision to leave Britain following Brexit After having been in the UK for more than 20 years now and it has been some of the best years of my life so far, but now I cannot wait to leave. That will happen the very moment my son leaves school. I am […]

The PM understands the importance of narrative and has turned government into a soap opera… how long can its leading character last?

The weirdest stories in Europe: The pub waiter who says he's a Spanish royal, and a corpse rides for six hours on a Swiss tram

Mitch Benn looks at another wild week in politics – including Joy Morrissey MP’s campaign to put portraits of the Queen everywhere, and the Matt Hancock affair PATRIOTISM TEST OF THE WEEK It’s been a terrific week for mandatory displays of fake patriotism, or indeed just another week of mandatory displays of fake patriotism if […]

He might seem to be unharmed by the scandals he presides over, but Boris Johnson’s position is more vulnerable than it looks. The fall will come, and it will be swift, brutal and comprehensive

What separates the Sackler Family from the Chambers Brothers, asks Will Self, as he ponders the differences between legal and illegal drug dealing One of my favourite cultural books – if such a broad category can be summoned into being, after all, aren’t all books in some sense, cultural? – is Land of Opportunity: One […]

British politics now exists in a moral vacuum. It cannot last

Italian boxer Primo Carnera’s extraordinary strength and size brought him fame and a sporting career, but not necessarily happiness As darkness fell over New York on New Year’s Eve 1929, Primo Carrera walked down the gangway of the SS Berengaria, stepped onto the quayside and wondered what the imminent decade held for him. Despite his […]

Sometimes brooding, sometimes brilliant, sometimes bludgeoning, Roberto Mancini’s remoulded Italy face a Euros date with destiny against Belgium European football is never complete without Italy. Sometimes brooding, sometimes brilliant, sometimes bludgeoning, Roberto Mancini’s remoulded Azzurri will on Friday aim to make Roberto Martinez’s Golden Generation of Belgium suffer and perhaps be suffocated in Munich. The […]

The small South American nation has produced two exceptional bandleaders from two different eras, who helped transform music in the UK Georgetown is 3,500 miles across the Atlantic from Britain, but it has exercised a huge influence on the music of the imperial mother country. This little city of low-rise colonial architecture, with the unspoilt jungle […]

Brexiteers promised mobile phone roaming charges would not return if we left the EU. It was just another lie It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain, where mobile phone users are discovering what Matt Hancock has already learned: Roaming can be costly. If UK tourists are ever allowed into […]

The effective slow disenfranchisement of the white working-class vote is Labour’s biggest problem in the Batley and Spen by-election

Muhammad Ali took part in some of history’s most memorable fights. One of his least remembered took place 45 years ago this week. It was certainly the most bizarre of his long career, and also one of the most consequential There are many ways to remember Muhammad Ali: cocky, young rapping poet; outspoken political and cultural icon; arguably […]

Mads Mikkelsen's drinking comedy Another Round is set for a Hollywood remake after winning the Oscar for Best International Film

GAVIN ESLER on the frustrations of political debate in an era where reason counts for little Recently an American reader sent an email to my website angrily denouncing a newspaper feature I had written. It was about gun control, or rather the lack of it. I’ll call him ‘John’ and he wrote: “I have lived in Texas for […]

The much-discussed culture war is being manufactured by the right, in order to obscure the real wounds in society The Remainers have been routed, the immigrants outed. Jeremy Corbyn has gone and Keir Starmer never really arrived. Everything should be wonderful in Great Borisland. But it isn’t, so who is to blame? The kraken wokes: […]

Five years on from Brexit, the issue is far from being “done”, despite promises from Boris Johnson.