France
Natalie Sarkic-Todd / 06 Sep 2022
Life Under Gorbachev
The End of the USSR
When Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR in 1985, I was studying Russian at university.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 10 Aug 2022
Post-War Youth
400 Blows After Netflix
François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows is one of cinema’s all-time classics, the 1959 film that demonstrated how deftly a new generation of French critics could transform themselves into the filmmakers of la nouvelle vague.(...)
Natalie Sarkic-Todd / 20 Apr 2022
First Impressions Last Forever
Dining With Marine Le Pen
Emmanuel Macron’s stump speech in Strasbourg last week was a blast from the past.(...)
Maxime Sattonnay / 30 Mar 2022
Putting Refugees First
French Aid Workers in Poland
Everyone’s going to Poland. Not just from Ukraine, but Western Europe.(...)
The Battleground / 21 Mar 2022
Never Mind the News
The Battleground’s Spring Books List
It's easier than ever to lose sight of books. With global crises overtaking our lives every couple of years now, to read anything other than news gets harder by the day.(...)
Josh White / 29 Nov 2021
Drowning in Hatred
Britain’s Immigration Debate
Borders bring almost as much insecurity as security.(...)
Duncan Simpson / 08 Sep 2021
Ideological Upheaval
Pandemic Rebels and Fascist Longings
Since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, opposition to anti-contagion efforts has been led by a small number of fringe groups and quasi-movements linked together by social media.(...)
Filip Noubel / 26 Jul 2021
Multilingual France
Paris Changes Policy
France's language policy has long placed French as the only “language of the Republic”, ignoring and banning, in certain instances, the use of more than twenty native languages.(...)
John Foster / 25 Jun 2021
Just Call it Capitalism
Europe’s Neoliberal Crisis
The development of the European Union in the last decade has been shaped by a malign synergy of neoliberalism and populism.(...)