It was a scene that could have come straight from the pages of the New Testament—and one almost unimaginable in today’s caste-ridden India. Around long tables under a large marquee in Hyderabad sat hundreds of people cross-legged on the floor. Clustered in groups of five or six, they ate curry and rice from a shared … Read more
It was a scene that could have come straight from the pages of the New Testament—and one almost unimaginable in today’s caste-ridden India. Around long tables under a large marquee in Hyderabad sat hundreds of people cross-legged on the floor. Clustered in groups of five or six, they ate curry and rice from a shared … Read more
Britain’s Conservative Party has recently elected its fourth leader since losing power in 1997 to Tony Blair, and the first leader to be regarded with a real chance of changing the party and returning to government. Just 39 years old, and a member of Parliament for only four years, David Cameron’s rise to the top … Read more
Americans tend to find Britain’s electoral system frankly bizarre. That is understandable. Here in Britain we “stand” for Parliament, while in America, you “run” for office—a difference of vocabulary that reflects a difference of speed, tone, and effort. An election campaign in the U.K. runs officially and at full throttle for no more than six … Read more
Five minutes can make all the difference. As I finished a dinner conversation with a Pakistani Senate aide in Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel, my colleague engaged in a physical tug-of-war over the check with our host, a local Christian human-rights activist. He insisted on paying and, once he did, suggested we leave. It seemed abrupt—generally, after … Read more
The tension was palpable. It was almost exactly a year to the day since the Assemblies of God church in Kesbewa, on the edge of the capital, Colombo, had been burned down. I walked carefully through the rubble and into the blackened shell—all that remained of the building. My guide stayed at the wheel of … Read more
“I had a brick in my face and had twelve stitches, and I had a chair thrown at me. On one occasion, the council was suspended when a man had his hands round my throat and had to be pulled off by the police. As a [Member of Parliament], my weekly advice centers were regularly … Read more
It was midnight on May 20, 2002. The flag had just been raised, the national anthem sung, and the world’s newest nation was born. I turned to the man next to me, a priest who was the first from his country to be exiled. His name was Rev. Francisco Maria Fernandes, and he’d lived in … Read more
Aizawl, Mizoram State, on the India-Burma border: It was dusk as we made our way down the mountainside to the headquarters of the Chin National Front (CNF). We were a motley crew—a deputy speaker of the British House of Lords, a retired surgeon, a British doctor living in Australia, a journalist-turned-human-rights advocate, a bearded, beer-drinking … Read more
“Americans are the friendliest people you will encounter, but they have few friends,” writes Dinesh D’Souza in his best-selling book What’s So Great About America. There’s a lot of truth in that. The growth of anti-American-ism, and in particular anti-Bushism, in Europe is frightening and, for me, incomprehensible. For the past six months I have … Read more
Baroness Caroline Cox is a difficult person to track down. She is just as likely to be found in jeans and a T-shirt in the bush in Sudan as she is in a smart suit in the chamber of the British House of Lords. You might see her climbing a mountain in the jungles of … Read more