America

Joe Biden has stressed the need for the world’s democracies to stand together as he arrived in the UK on his first overseas trip as US president. Biden will meet Boris Johnson in Cornwall on Thursday ahead of the G7 summit and is expected to deliver a warning not to let the Brexit trade dispute […]

Writer and historian MISHA GLENNY on attempts to revive an alliance of democracies to withstand the threats of the modern age Joe Biden is running out of time. In just 17 months, he faces mid-term elections when the Democrats are almost certain to lose their wafer-thin congressional majority. In that period, he hopes to steer […]

Joe Biden will warn Boris Johnson and the European Union not to “imperil” the Northern Ireland peace process, the US president’s national security adviser said, as they struggle to resolve a trade row. Jake Sullivan warned that Biden harbours “very deep” concerns on the issue provoked by Brexit, before he on Wednesday left for the […]

Troubled tennis player Naomi Osaka sparked outrage on the circuit by pulling out of French Open press conferences and then the tournament itself – but she will be vindicated In August 202, at the height of the protests against the public police murder of George Floyd, Naomi Osaka said: “Before I am an athlete, I […]

Remembering the moment when the world’s most famous sportsman was bundled out of his hotel by rebel gunmen Sport and politics have always mixed, but they have never collided quite so spectacularly as they did in the lobby of Havana’s Hotel Lincoln on February 23, 1958. That day, as five-time Formula 1 champion and possibly the […]

US president Joe Biden is set to issue a fresh Brexit warning to prime minister Boris Johnson during their first face-to-face meeting at the G7 summit this week. The Times reports Biden will use a bilateral meeting with the PM to explicitly express US support for the Northern Ireland Protocol. The pair will meet ahead of […]

The US president was expected by many, including his supporters, to be an uninspiring, unimaginative and ineffective leader. He is confounding those expectations in spectacular style When Joe Biden seemed to just limp over the line in the race for the White House last November, the considered opinion seemed to be that the nature of his victory – […]

How the friendship of tragic poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, forged over long, cocktail-soaked lunches, paved the way for the rest of us In 1950s America, white, middle-class women were not supposed to be ambitious. In fact, women were respected for not pursuing their own careers and instead focusing their attentions on the home […]

Netflix series Master of None has successfully negotiated a change of focus after its creator was caught up in a #MeToo scandal The first two seasons of Master of None sound awful when described – “an actor bops about New York dating beautiful women and eating at nice restaurants” – and sometimes they are. Aziz Ansari stars as Dev, […]

Black Lives Matter was not the only engine for the worldwide justice movement that sprung from the death of George Floyd Was the underlying drive of Black Lives Matter the only engine for the worldwide justice movement that sprung from the death of George Floyd? Or was there something else, too? When I first heard […]

Danny Huston’s grandfather, his dad and his sister all won Oscars, creating a Hollywood dynasty. No pressure, then.  Movie night when Danny Huston was a kid probably sounds a little different to the ones we’ve all held with our families in lockdown. “There was always a big palaver about getting the projector out,” he says […]

Megan Nolan reviews Real Housewives of New York, a show built on an addictive desire to feel superior and perhaps even pity for America’s super-rich This week season 13 of the reality show Real Housewives of New York began. I am badly addicted to this particular iteration of the franchise (there are Real Housewives in Atlanta, […]

Bonnie Greer on the impact of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, one of the greatest albums of all time, 50 years after its release Growing up African American and a sheltered Catholic schoolgirl on the South Side of Chicago, Marvin Gaye was the “ooh baby, baby man”. He was the troubadour of our clandestine basement […]

From beach bums to hippies, hair metal rockers to gangster rappers, LA’s musical story has more twists than most. LA is a city of extremes. It’s a place where you either make it big or hit rock bottom, with a huge gulf between the mansions of Bel Air and the tents and shacks of Skid Row, […]

Mexican Coke is now on sale in the UK, but will it ever replace the real thing, with its iconic glass Coca-Cola bottles? My uncle used to buttonhole the sommeliers in expensive restaurants and ask for “a bottle of American Beaujolais”. A so-called ‘Mad Man’ – or Madison Avenue advertising copywriter – he knew the […]

What will happen to police reform in America following the verdict over George Floyd? Another day. Another African American man faced the police. This time it was 20-year-old Daunte Wright, driving his car through Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Wright was pulled over by cops and a female officer shot him dead. It happened 10 miles away […]

The new film The United States vs Billie Holiday is part of a canonisation the singer would have disliked, says Bonnie Greer There are a few artists who we choose to journey to Calvary with us. One of them is an African American woman born Eleanora Fagan, who changed her name to Billie Holiday. That […]

The life of Black Panthers leader Hampton is the subject of a new movie starring Daniel Kaluuya. Bonnie Greer remembers the Hampton she knew briefly You never really go back to your youth. You move on, things happen to you. But your youth is still there, on the edges, and as you get older it moves […]

Bonnie Greer on how American’s obsession with personal freedom makes Joe Biden’s fight against coronavirus even tougher “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, I’m begging of you please don’t hesitate. Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, ’cause once you’re dead then that’s a bit too late.” And to the tune of her great song Jolene, Dolly Parton got herself […]

Musicians from the US capital city have been more effective than many of its politicians at articulating the country’s problems. By SOPHIA DEBOICK The official presidential playlists issued by Joe Biden – who marks 50 days in office this week – do not necessarily reveal much about his personal musical tastes. The practice, started by […]

Few scandals have provided as vivid a cast of characters as Watergate. Yet the story often overlooks the one man without whom it would simply never have been detected. Washington DC, 2.30am, June 17, 1972, and security guard Frank Wills is doing his rounds at the Watergate Building Complex. It’s been a quiet night. In […]

Recent days have given a clear sign of how the West is realigning after the Trump era and seeking to re-engage with its challenges. Within minutes the picture had become an internet sensation. It showed Angela Merkel and other world leaders standing over, and glaring at, a seated Donald Trump, his hands crossed in defiance. It had […]

We are not in a post-Trump era, just because the man himself has left the White House, says BONNIE GREER. When a family member announced that – finally – they were getting married, all of us were really happy. When we found out that they were marrying a Trump supporter, again, everyone was still really happy. This […]

Social media won’t the same again without Donald Trump, says LIZ GERARD. But the issues he raised online have not gone away. We’ll miss him now he’s gone. Not from the White House, but from Twitter. Mad, bad and dangerous, maybe. But @realdonaldtrump brought us smiles as well as sighs. Who could forget “Covfefe” or […]

The US has entered the post-Trump era. But don’t expect things to get much smoother, says JAMES BALL If the last few years had been a movie, then Wednesday of this week would surely be the last, triumphant scene. Yes, the bad guys had been winning for most of the running time – and the pandemic gave us […]

The highest death toll from coronavirus in the world and an economic fallout leaving millions jobless has compounded the turmoil of a bitterly-divided nation where democracy itself at times seemed in jeopardy. It falls to Joe Biden to begin a repair job on a gargantuan scale when he enters the White House as the 46th […]

The Donald Trump baby blimp has been “consigned to history” – at a museum. The huge inflatable depicts the US president in a nappy and clutching a mobile phone. It took to the skies, above Parliament Square, during protests over Trump’s state visit to the UK. The Museum of London announced in 2019 that it […]

BONNIE GREER reports on the US Capitol riots and what they tell us about modern populism. Was the storming of the US Capitol by the supporters of Donald Trump the beginning of the end of populism? Was this the lethal highpoint, the death knell for the crusade that went under the banner ‘Make America Great Again’? With the banning […]