Jimmy watches Countdown and tries to ignore his bills, grief, COPD and frailty. Meanwhile, his carer walks a tightrope between kindness and reality
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Trump and the US tradition of despotic presidents
EMMA SHORTIS applauds a history of the US that demonstrates the historical precedents for presidential authoritarianism
Cartoon by Steven Ashman
JOHN FLINT explores the Appleby Blue development, winner of the Stirling prize 2025
GORDON PARSONS enjoys the wealth of wisdom and the clarity of expression from a dialogue between Chomsky and Mujica
GUILLERMO THOMAS enjoys a survey of the current state of the CIA (aka Langley) from an expert and insider of sorts
MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O CONNOR and JOHN GREEN review The Choral, Belen, Dragonfly, and Colossal Wreck
WILL STONE is frustrated by a performance that chooses to garble the lyrics and drown the songs in reverb
RITA DI SANTO points out the social experience of exploitation and oppression that inform the popular winners at this year’s festival
The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself
Nick Bryant, Bloomsbury, £25
IF you select “virtually any date in US history, it would be possible to find the same poisonous ingredients [that] percolated violently to the surface on January 6, 2021,” writes journalist and historian Nick Bryant in his new book, The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself.
Donald Trump, and the movement behind him, is both new and old; times are unprecedented but also, to historians of the US, frighteningly familiar. Bryant, a historian by training, meticulously makes sense of these contradictions, methodically unpicking the mythology of US history to clearly argue that Trump — and his support — is the product of that history.
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