IN MID-MARCH Izawati Dewi, a mother of one, began queuing at 4am at her local shop to buy cooking oil. By the time it opened, the line snaked 2km through her town in central Java. She was lucky enough to secure a pack. The shortage was nationwide.
TopThe lives and love of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh
Two months later, the lovers embarked on an American theatre tour as Romeo and Juliet. Four months after that, having finalised divorces from their previous spouses, they were able to get married. That all happens within four pages of Stephen Galloway’s new joint biography. It must have seemed that the couple were leading the most charmed of lives.
TopSandy Hook was a turning-point in America’s battle over truth
THEY WERE hiding in a bathroom when he arrived. On December 14th 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fired more than 80 bullets through the door, killing 15 children while he laughed.
TopAfrican-Americans have shaped American cuisine in surprising ways
THE MOST visually striking things on display at “African/American: Making the Nation’s Table”, an exhibition at the Africa Centre in Harlem, are a quilt and a kitchen.
TopSix books that explain the history and culture of Ukraine
The author is the most distinguished historian of Ukraine writing in English. “Chernobyl”, his book on the nuclear disaster of 1986, is a masterful account of its causes and consequences.
TopHotVladimir Putin’s war endangers Ukraine’s cultural heritage
Now the amorous couple are back in a packing-case, hidden away not from German occupying forces this time, but Russian ones.
TopDisavow some Russian artists. Don’t cancel Russian art
“I am an artist,” protests Anna Netrebko (pictured), a superstar Russian soprano who has repudiated the war in Ukraine but not Vladimir Putin.
TopA swashbuckling smuggler’s tale
IN 18TH-CENTURY ENGLAND, free trade meant a high-stakes gamble against the laws and forces of the state. Well-armed and merciless, gangs of smugglers cowed, or recruited, seafaring communities along the southern coasts.