Articles

01.05.13 Publication: La Stampa

All politicians need luck, especially in their early months in office. So the lucky star has certainly shone on Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Even...

23.04.13 Publication: FT

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01.04.13 Publication: La Stampa

What makes a great political leader? One measure, most probably, is whether you still inspire fierce passions, of both love and hate, many years after you left...

26.03.13 Publication: The Guardian

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28.02.13 Publication: The Times

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27.02.13 Publication: CNN

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01.02.13 Publication: La Stampa

Foreigners, especially journalists and politicians, love jokes and simplifications, which is why so many have reached for the word “clowns” to describe...

21.01.13 Publication: The Times

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19.12.12 Publication: The Times

The threatened return of the bunga-bunga warrior is only one part of the country’s refusal to face harsh reality  He just cannot resist the...

18.12.12 Publication: La Stampa

It felt a bit strange. On Sunday afternoon, from a video connection deep in the English countryside, I was transported to the other side of the world and also...

10.12.12 Publication: La Stampa

If someone had told me, a dozen years ago, that by now I would be writing and thinking, and even making a film, not about Japan, China or my other old topics...

06.12.12 Publication: FT

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02.12.12 Publication: L´espresso

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19.11.12 Publication: La Stampa

As I sat on Friday in the Sala D’Arme of Florence’s wonderful Palazzo Vecchio, listening to so many young people, from Mayor Renzi to the “pionieri”...

09.11.12 Publication: FT

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04.11.12 Publication: La Stampa

As we gathered for a convivial Piemontese dinner in Torino on our first evening, and as we drove out the next day into the perfect, vine-laden hills of the...

01.10.12 Publication: La Stampa

Other countries’ popular television stars are generally incomprehensible to foreigners, whether they are game-show hosts, comedians, showgirls or even...

24.09.12 Publication: The Times

“How courteous is the Japanese,” ran Ogden Nash’s poem from the 1930s, “he always says ‘Excuse it please.’ He climbs into his neighbor’s garden,...

10.09.12 Publication: The Times

How nice it would be to bounce back cheerfully in after one’s summer break, predicting that the economic crisis was over, that recovery was on the way, that...

20.08.12 Publication: The Times

As we near the fourth anniversary of the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank, and even the fifth of when the distressed warbling of canaries in our...

06.08.12 Publication: The Times

These days, Chinese efficiency is much admired. Indeed, until our Olympics got successfully under way, London lingered under the shadow of Beijing’s...

05.08.12 Publication: La Stampa

We should probably thank Mitt Romney. Until the Republican candidate for America’s presidency came to London and made the mistake of publicly casting doubt...

23.07.12 Publication: The Times

The sun has got its hat on, at last, and many are about to luxuriate in all that lycra at the Games. It will be a distraction, of sorts, from the economic...

22.07.12 Publication: La Stampa

We in the northern hemisphere are entering our summer holidays in a gloomy mood, partly because we are being joined in our gloom by some of the emerging...