In the technical jargon, it’s called a wipe-out: a magazine or newspaper cover with one story only… and an absence of (more technical jargon) coverlines.
And there really is only one story this week. The only trouble is, nobody quite knows what it is.
Has Trump’s B-2 bombing of Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites triggered World War Three, or has he just teed himself up for the Nobel Peace Prize? Will his ordained ceasefire hold, or will Iran and Israel—two nations who, in Trump’s words, “don’t know what the f*** they’re doing”—keep slogging away at each other?
In my must-read this week, and our New World wipe-out cover story headlined Weapons Grade Narcissist, Matthew d’Ancona takes a journey into a strange and foreign territory… the mind of the 47th President of the United States.
As ever with Matthew, it’s a forensic report—his evidence pieced together from a decade of paying the closest possible attention to Trump’s actions, married with a peerless understanding of US political history. For my money, nobody in British journalism comes close to matching his analysis of what is happening in America—and by extension, the new world we occupy.
Matthew is much too seasoned a commentator to pretend to know what comes next. In a story that pirouettes by the hour, that would be foolish. In a way, it’s the very point:
“When the main protagonist is barely in control of himself, where does that leave the rest of us?” he concludes.
As geopolitics reshapes itself into new power blocs, a continent that is woefully underreported in the UK press is Africa. In a fascinating report, our newest contributing editor Emma Sky – the director of Yale’s International Leadership Centre – returns from Senegal, where she finds a young nation full of cultural pride, rejecting victimhood and determined to seek a new identity for the continent. It’s a beautifully written article: part travelogue, part political analysis. A joy to read.
Lucy Reade, recently a winner in the Student Publications Association awards, makes her debut in New World print with an incisive and witty explanation of a new phenomenon—that of “rat people.”
This trend among Chinese Gen Z youth, an advancement (if that’s possible for a philosophy which involves staying in bed all day) of the Japanese “lying flat” movement hikikomori, has its equal here in the UK, Lucy believes… it’s just that the Chinese are more honest about it.
Lucy’s article will be invaluable for concerned parents trying to explain to their attention-span-deficient offspring how much damage doomscrolling and social media can do. Though since it’s longer than a tweet, you might have to read it to them.
Such is the workload demanded of a New World editor-in-chief, I too rarely leave the house. But this week I made the effort and visited the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. The Summer Exhibition is a unique event – but perhaps not quite the exercise in meritocracy it pretends to be.
Still, for an ever-hopeful hack artist like myself, it offers perpetual hope that one day I too could be hung alongside Tracey Emin and David Hockney. Amongst the 1,700-odd works of art, I discover a breathtaking sculpture… perhaps the final breath?
Finally, one of the most loved regulars in The New European – and now The New World – is Peter Trudgill’s brilliant language column. This week he reveals the history behind the words claret and merlot. As a side note, my own consumption of merlot dipped dramatically ever since seeing it dismissed in the fabulous film Sideways. I recently discovered that the famous scene – “I’m not drinking any f***ing merlot”—had no basis in critical reality, yet caused untold damage to the Californian merlot industry.
I suggest, if you are so inclined, that you do your bit to redress this: pour yourself a decent glass, settle back, and read this week’s The New World.
