This story goes back in time to Sergei Skripal’s life in the Russian intelligence service, long before he was poisoned in Salisbury. It skilfully intersperses his story with that of the wider geopolitical climate, from the fall of the USSR to today.
Xu Xiang was China’s most successful hedge fund manager, posting returns in excess of 800% and worth $2.2bn. Unfortunately, his card was marked.
This piece kicks off with an evocative depiction of the scene typically found at the V.I.P. terminal of Baghdad International Airport. It was there where in April 2017 a group of Qataris were held on arrival when their luggage was found to contain $360 million in cash. Their presence was linked to a royal hunting trip turned kidnapping that would significantly affect the Middle East’s geopolitics.
A powerful piece looking at the complex new reality emerging in a city and country so horribly affected by civil war, where the regime is now feeling a new confidence.
A trove of extremely well preserved vessels has been found in the Black Sea, some a thousand years old.
A thoughtful piece on the transcendental beauty and structural fragility of one of the most celebrated works of art in the world, Michelangelo’s statue of David.
An essay on Philip Roth’s 2004 counterfactual novel, which imagines that famed flying ace and isolationist Charles Lindbergh won the Republican nomination for the 1940 US Presidential Election, and proceeded to embark on a campaign of persecution.
A profile of James Mattis, the US Defence Secretary, and the last remaining core member of the so-called “Committee to save America”, after the recent dismissals of H.R McMaster and Rex Tillerson.
An initiative by The New York Times aiming to address the imbalance of coverage in their obituary section starts with profiles of fifteen women who were overlooked at the time of their death. The set includes remarkable figures from many walks of life – from great writers such as Charlotte Bront and Sylvia Plath, to the early civil rights campaigner and journalist Ida B. Wells, and to Henrietta Lacks, whose cells were taken from her body without permission and used for medical research.
A profile of a man who makes a lots of money identifying and exposing financial chicanery.