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The play that changed my life: ‘You meet 33 characters in Barber Shop Chronicles – I believed in all of them’

The play that changed my life: ‘You meet 33 characters in Barber Shop Chronicles – I believed in all of them’

Inua Ellams’ play takes you to different destinations for intimate conversations about sex, queerness, capitalism, football and much more I first saw Barber Shop Chronicles on National Theatre at Home . It was during the first lockdown in 2020 and I was trying to find some entertainment while I was furloughed. I was 26 and hadn’t seen a lot of theatre, but had heard good things about it on social media. For the first five minutes or so the audience are milling around the barber shop set. You’re not really sure who’s an actor and who’s an audience member. But there’s a real sense of camaraderie, jokes and vibes – you really feel part of it. The setting is not exactly domestic, not exactly business. There wasn’t a raised stage so you felt invited, and then kind of zoomed, into the action. Continue reading...

Is it the end of the line for one of India’s most distinctive garments?

Is it the end of the line for one of India’s most distinctive garments?

The bandhgala jacket will no longer be part of the formal uniform for Indian Railways staff, following claims it symbolises a ‘colonial mindset’ It is one India’s most ubiquitous garments, with origins in the grand Mughal courts and Rajasthani kingdoms of times past, and still widely favoured by sharply dressed grooms at wedding receptions. But this week, the distinctive high-collared bandhgala jacket – known to many as the “princely jacket” in a nod to its royal origins – found itself at the centre of a lively debate after it was denounced by the Indian railways minister as a symbol of a “colonial mindset”. Continue reading...

Africa’s great elephant divide: countries struggle with too many elephants – or too few

Africa’s great elephant divide: countries struggle with too many elephants – or too few

In countries such as South Sudan, the great herds have all but disappeared. But further south, conservation success mean increasing human-wildlife conflict It is late on a January afternoon in the middle of South Sudan’s dry season, and the landscape, pricked with stubby acacias, is hazy with smoke from people burning the grasslands to encourage new growth. Even from the perspective of a single-engine ultralight aircraft, we are warned it will be hard to spot the last elephant in Badingilo national park, a protected area covering nearly 9,000 sq km (3,475 sq miles). Technology helps – the 20-year-old bull elephant wears a GPS collar that pings coordinates every hour. The animal’s behaviour patterns also help; Badingilo’s last elephant is so lonely that it moves with a herd of giraffes. Continue reading...

The crisis whisperer: how Adam Tooze makes sense of our bewildering age

The crisis whisperer: how Adam Tooze makes sense of our bewildering age

Whether it’s the financial crash, the climate emergency or the breakdown of the international order, historian Adam Tooze has become the go-to guide to the radical new world we’ve entered In late January 2025, 10 days after Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time as president of the United States, an economic conference in Brussels brought together several officials from the recently deposed Biden administration for a discussion about the global economy. In Washington, Trump and his wrecking crew were already busy razing every last brick of Joe Biden’s legacy, but in Brussels, the Democratic exiles put on a brave face. They summoned the comforting ghosts of white papers past, intoning old spells like “worker-centered trade policy” and “middle-out bottom-up economics”. They touted their late-term achievements. They even quoted poetry: “We did not go gently into that good night,” Katherine Tai, who served as Biden’s US trade representative, said from the stage. Tai proudly told the audience that before leaving office she and her team had worked hard to complete “a set of supply-chain-resiliency papers, a set of model negotiating texts, and a shipbuilding investigation”. It was not until 70 minutes into the conversation that a discordant note was sounded, when Adam Tooze joined the panel remotely. Born in London, raised in West Germany, and living now in New York, where he teaches at Columbia, Tooze was for many years a successful but largely unknown academic. A decade ago he was recognised, when he was recognised at all, as an economic historian of Europe. Since 2018, however, when he published Crashed, his “contemporary history” of the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, Tooze has become, in the words of Jonathan Derbyshire, his editor at the Financial Times, “a sort of platonic ideal of the universal intellectual”. Continue reading...

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy review – Holly Hunter is a transgressive thrill in this horny high-school spinoff

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy review – Holly Hunter is a transgressive thrill in this horny high-school spinoff

This hormone-fuelled tale of the training college for space voyagers is like Grange Hill, with phasers – and it has a female lead unlike any captain before The original Star Trek TV series debuted in 1966, so trying to get your head round all the sequels, prequels and timeline-splitting spin-offs can often feel like homework. It was only a matter of time before the venerable sci-fi franchise used a school as a setting. But Starfleet Academy , the latest streaming series, is not some random cosmic polytechnic for aliens to study humanities or vice versa. This is the oft-referenced San Francisco space campus sited right next to the Golden Gate Bridge. With James T Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard on the alumni list, it is basically Hogwarts for wannabe starship captains. Or at least it used to be. As this newest Trek opens we are in the 32nd century: as far into the future as the franchise has ever gone, boldly or otherwise. (The original 1966 five-year mission for Kirk and co took place in the 23rd century.) The universe is still recovering from the Burn, an all-encompassing cataclysm from 2020’s season three of Star Trek: Discovery that put the kibosh on faster-than-light warp travel. After an extended period of intergalactic isolationism, Starfleet Academy is about to receive its first new intake for over a century. Mega-fan Stephen Colbert is already on board as the school’s PA announcer. All it needs is a new chancellor. Continue reading...

The pub that changed me: ‘The barman banned me – no process, no second chances, no appeal’

The pub that changed me: ‘The barman banned me – no process, no second chances, no appeal’

The world’s largest Wetherspoon’s has seal-spotting views, a green leather banquette and a grand central staircase. I would do anything for that pub, so imagine my surprise when I was given my marching orders In the most prime imaginable bit of Ramsgate beach real estate, right on the sand, stands a handsome, turn-of-the-last-century building that had claimed for the longest amount of time, some years in neon, to be a casino. I’d never been allowed in as a kid. Then in the 90s it was leaning towards defunct, by the 00s it looked a bit haunted, then there was a fire, and wham, 2017, it turned into a Spoons. It had been trailed for a few months ahead, and I’d sworn off it; the living nightmare that was Brexit was only a few months old and Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin was one of its most gracelessly triumphant fuglemen. He could keep his (incredibly cheap) pints and his (superhumanly fast) nuggets. Continue reading...

My Danish-Indian family has experienced empire first-hand. For all of us, Trump’s imperialism is terrifying | Mira Kamdar

My Danish-Indian family has experienced empire first-hand. For all of us, Trump’s imperialism is terrifying | Mira Kamdar

The US I grew up in was built on the rule of law. Now my Indian-born dad is scared ICE will take him from his American care home As an American of mixed Danish and Indian heritage, who is also a citizen of France and, therefore, of the EU, Donald Trump’s contempt for the rule of law fills me with dread. “I don’t need international law,” he boasted on 7 January in an interview with the New York Times. For Louis XIV, it was “ L’état, c’est moi ”. For Trump, it’s the “Donroe doctrine”, or “the western hemisphere is mine for whatever profit I and my elite group of loyal courtiers can wring from it”. At the same time, Trump’s honesty about his intention to use the astonishing military power he wields for unfettered plunder is at least refreshing. No more American pieties to democracy and human rights. The world hasn’t seen this kind of unabashed dedication to amassing wealth since the British East India Company. All hail the new king emperor ! Or else. Mira Kamdar is a Paris-based writer and author of India in the 21st Century . She writes Mixed Borders on Substack Continue reading...

Ugandans to vote in election expected to extend Museveni’s four-decade rule

Ugandans to vote in election expected to extend Museveni’s four-decade rule

Campaign beset by violence with supporters of rival candidate Bobi Wine teargassed and detained Ugandans are preparing to vote in an election that is expected to result in Yoweri Museveni extending his nearly four-decade grip on power in the east African country, after a campaign beset by violence. Security forces have frequently clamped down on supporters of Museveni’s main opponent, Bobi Wine, by teargassing and shooting bullets at events and detaining people. Authorities have also arrested civil society members and suspended rights groups. On Tuesday, they shut down internet access and limited mobile phone services countrywide. Continue reading...