Section: Prospect (The United Kingdom)
Big question: after the Litvinenko inquiry, should we boycott the Russian World Cup?
Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) and suspended FIFA President Sepp Blatter pose on stage during the Preliminary Draw of the FIFA World Cup 2018 in St. Petersburg, Russia, 25th July 2015. ©MARCUS BRANDT/dpa Late last week the Litvinenko report was published. In it was the claim that Vladimir Putin “probably” approved the murder of former...
The Litvinenko inquiry sends a clear message to Moscow
Marina Litvinenko, the wife of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, speaks to the media outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London, where the findings of the inquiry into his death were revealed. ©Philip Toscano/PA Wire/Press Association Images Sir Robert Owen, the chairman of the enquiry into the assassination of former Russian spy and UK...
What will our new technology mean for spies?
Read a second piece on the tension between security and privacy, also published in the February 2016 issue of Prospect, here Sir John will be joining Prospect on 25th February to talk about his time as Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Tickets are going fast, click here to buy yours now Can we stop a Paris-style attack happening in...
Shostakovich: technician of survival
Shostakovich with fellow composers Sergei Prokofiev (left) and Aram Khachaturian (right) The Noise of Time, by Julian Barnes, Vintage, £14.99 The life of Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich is at once well-documented and elusive. Famous from an early age, the Russian composer was surrounded for his whole life by family, musicians, pupils,...
How to avoid nuclear catastrophe
On North Korea’s recent nuclear test Unconfirmed reports today suggest that North Korea has detonated a nuclear device. The country’s new agency reported the test as a success, while western analysis of the shockwave suggests that the device may have “fizzled”—that is, the bomb core may not have undergone fission. North Korea’s...
“My Nazi Legacy”: a film about guilt and memory
Philippe Sands (centre) with Niklas Frank (left) and Horst von Wächter (right) in the killings fields of Ukraine : Ian Kershaw–the fall and rise of modern Europe Like many other descendants of Holocaust victims, Philippe Sands wanted to find out more about the circumstances of their deaths. The lawyer and academic, author of Lawless World and...
Trouble at the Bolshoi
Stars of the Russian Bolshoi ballet in action © HBO It was like a scene from The Phantom of the Opera: a tale of high art, jealousy and violence. In January 2013, the artistic director of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet entered his home and had acid thrown in his face. Few people outside the rarefied world of ballet knew of Sergei Filin before the...
Twelve things you need to know about Brexit
© illustrations by Tom Saffill The referendum on whether the UK will leave the European Union is likely to turn, in the end, on whether its interest in free trade with the continent will outweigh public hostility to unimpeded immigration from there. It may be a close call. Britain’s political elite has long prided itself on its embrace of...
The big ideas of 2016: growth of the Anglosphere/decline of the Brics
Read the rest of Prospect‘s big ideas of 2016 here. Prepare for a return of the old economic order. In the coming year, growth in Britain and the United States will be steady, unemployment will decline, interest rates will rise and there may even be a pinch of inflation. And while the “Anglo-Saxon” model delivers this welcome result, the...
Russia and the west are locked into a new violent normal
A woman, left, holds a poster reading “Turkey to account!” as others wave Russian and Syrian national flags during a picket at the Turkish Embassy in Moscow, Russia © AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin Watching the shaking, blazing footage of a Russian jet downed by the Turkish air force one question was running through millions of people’s minds—is...
