I sat down with my mum – 95-years-old, in case you missed the earlier post – today and explained the epidemic to her in blunt terms.

We have
long since reversed the parent-offspring role – I even tell her t […]

The French lockdown has only been going on half a day and it already feels like a month, an exceptionally stressful month. Meanwhile, we’re all reading online and the French media are carrying Q+As about […]

After two days’ phoney war, the president has opened serious hostilities against the Coronavirus. From midday we are confined to our homes, at pain of a 135-euro fine for unjustified sorties.

Not much s […]

France’s minister for machismo, Christophe Castaner, has covered himself in ridicule by falsely claiming that a group of demonstrators attacked a hospital during this week’s May Day demonstration in Par […]

Anarchists and some Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protesters promised to clash with police on the 2019 May Day demonstrations. And they did. The unions accused police of attacking some of their members, even though […]

The French authorities are not exactly slow to spot a terror attack but they have said there is no evidence that the Notre Dame fire was caused by one. That hasn’t stopped the far right from hatching conspiracy […]

The Democratic Socialist Congresswoman’s answer to well-heeled Republicans who claim that environmental concerns are “elitist” was inspiring. But …

Dear
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes,

You
probably won’t r […]

The French Gilets Jaunes revolt is something of a magic mirror. Anyone looking at it sees whatever they want to see.

On the first Paris demonstration. Photo: Tony Cross

The left,
in France and abroad, has […]

Recep Tayyip Erdogan  was sworn in as Turkey’s president on Monday, assuming new powers that consolidate his power, already strengthened by post-coup purges and a long-running media clampdown. I covered Ju […]

Saturday, 3 February 2018

On a drizzly Saturday evening in February I joined a queue of hundreds to trudge through the mud of a building site. Not just any building site. The Grand Paris Express, […]

The majority of French voters have rejected Marine Le Pen. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the elected president is a free-market fanatic whose programme inspired a record number of people to cast b […]

The result of Turkey’s referendum was a cliff-hanger, which I witnessed at the main opposition party’s HQ where accusations of fraud were flying. At the polls I saw the deep divisions in the country, No sup […]

With Turkish nationalists split over the 16 April constitutional referendum and even some dissidence in President Recep Tayip Erdogan’s AKP, the country’s largest ethnic minority, the Kurds, found themselves cou […]

I arrived in Turkey just over a week before 16 April’s referendum whose aim was to put the popular stamp of approval on the de-facto concentration of power in the hands of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The o […]

2016 having turned out to be the year of the unpredictable, there’s been a brief spasm of soulsearching in the news media. Maybe one question we might like to address is the often unconscious bias in the words w […]

Turkey is executing a dramatic change in foreign policy, aligning itself with Vladimir Putin’s Russia in part because of the US’s and the EU’s reaction to the purge that followed the 15 July coup attempt. Rulin […]

Turkish President President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is furious at foreign criticism of the crackdown that has followed the 15 July coup attempt. What does anyone expect after a military power grab? he wants to know. […]

Turkey’s government has launched a purge of all institutions since the failed 15 July coup, including the media. But how do we know if it is pursuing genuine plotters or  witch-hunting government c […]