The globalization of soccer has distanced players from national fan bases—which is why the World Cup provokes such identity crises
When he came to office, the Prime Minister seemed another JFK. Now his mystique is dissipated and his promise shattered. The chief cause of his failure is the war in Iraq—a war he led his people into against their will, for reasons that were not true
Oscar Wilde cannot be simplified into an Irish rebel, a subversive socialist, or a gay martyr
The conflict between two eternal Irish types
On George Orwell, World Cup soccer, and the Queen
V. S. Naipaul is certainly no liberal—and herein lies his importance
The recent election of the party's new leader is the surprising result of four decades of reform
Auberon Waugh, the acerbic British man of letters, died in January. Our author remembers him and reflects on Waugh's complex, heartbreaking relationship with his father, Evelyn
An Englishman tours historic battlefields in Massachusetts and New York
The British Broadcasting Corporation is having a hard time living up to its past. But what a past! Our correspondent reviews its history, seeking the roots of its present troubles
The father wrote fiction as the son still does, with brilliance and "facile bravura," but Martin Amis misunderstood his hereditary gifts when he turned from playful comedy to "the great issues of our time"
Scottish independence is in the air, and it may well stay there, masking the facts of English domination
Under Margaret Thatcher and now under Tony Blair, Britain has become markedly less class-bound. How did this happen?
A revived reference book offers a fanfare for the common aristo
Adored as "the People's William" and execrated by "the upper ten thousand," Gladstone was the great statesman of his age.
"You have to remember," says someone who knows him, "that the great passion in his life is his hatred of the Labour Party"
The annual Wexford Festivalmakes opera great fun
A skier's pilgrimage to Switzerland--and how to afford one
Like the Dreyfus Affair, the Rushdie Affair has in complicated ways divided opinion along left-right lines. And it isn’t easy to say which side has behaved better—or worse