Hanoi

What Ovid in exile was missing

A notable recent trend in popular history is the revival of interest in the ancient world. Mary Beard, Tom Holland, Bettany Hughes and Peter Stothard are just some of the historians whose books and television series have cashed in on our thirst for knowledge of distant forebears and their civilisations. Now Owen Rees joins the merry band with a strikingly original take on the subject. He argues that our interest in classical history focuses almost entirely on the Graeco-Roman world, specifically on the capital centres of those cultures. We therefore miss much of what was going on at the periphery of empires, with their vibrant cities and peoples.

Joe Biden’s grapple with senility is the GOP’s 2024 message

From our US edition

Weep, ad men. The Republican Party shouldn’t have to rely on any of you in 2024. They don’t need your creative, your deployment of over-the-top grainy crime videos, your use of shooting up legislation with AR-15s. All the GOP needs this election is an editor and the C-SPAN live feed of Joe Biden coping with senility. For a cringe-inducing twenty-six minutes in Hanoi, Biden put his diminished, cranky, meandering mental capacity on display. He rolled out his frequently deployed Hollywood equivalent of a Mandela Effect — his own personal Berenstein Bears, his Stouffer’s Stove Top — about a movie scene that simply does not exist in the plane of existence which we, for our sins, inhabit.

joe biden

Walking Hanoi

From our US edition

I let the roosters wake me at 4:30 a.m., since it’s already 88 degrees out, will be 100 by noon and I want to get in my full fifteen-mile walk without suffering heat stroke. My intended route is from my small rented apartment in southwest Hanoi, due east to the banks of the Red River, then back again, or maybe something else entirely. My plans are always rough, the daily walks changing depending on what I see, who I meet and what strikes me. That is why I walk, rather than drive or bike: so I can change stuff up on the fly — and let events, people and things I find along the way determine where I go. The only things that stay constant are aiming for between ten and twenty miles a day, and never using cabs.

hanoi