We are entering an age of deportation - my @newstatesman.com cover story on how mass expulsions will transform what it means to be British, via Kipling, Enoch Powell, Hanif Kureishi...and a heroic vigilante cycle repairist from Eritrea

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

A year on from the summer riots, my latest @newstatesman.com column muses on the nature of political violence and how to keep it from consuming our streets, via Gandhi, MLK, Malcolm X and that most underrated of social theorists, director Spike Lee. newstatesman.com/politics/uk-po…

7/7 was twenty years ago today.

In my column for the @newstatesman.com, I reflect on how the London bombings reshaped British cultural life and brought 'the Muslim' to the centre of its discourse.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...

Has Christianity regained the underground appeal of its earliest days?

My essay in the @financialtimes.com at the weekend explored the revival of a highly personalised spirituality, notably among Gen-Z, and what some recent writing may reveal about the phenomenon.

www.ft.com/content/9446...

Roland Barthes magical on the way chopsticks "never violate the foodstuff", unlike the "predatory" knife and fork. This is from his book of reflections mostly on Japan, Empire of Signs.

For @thespectator1828.bsky.social I looked at the modernist painters of Brazil and their unique postcolonial vision of culture that did not distinguish between the foreign and the native. www.spectator.co.uk/article/was-...

One day at school, I found myself wondering, "am I black?" We were being taught about Gandhi during Black History Month. If, as my teachers were suggesting, the Mahatma was black, was I not too?
Last year for @newstatesman.com, I reflected on the politics of race www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

And this was my feature for @theguardian.com jointly profiling the film director Asif Kapadia and the choreographer Akram Khan after they made the excellent post-apocalyptic dance film Creature

www.theguardian.com/film/2023/fe...

To introduce myself to my new followers on this platform, I am posting some of my past writings.

Is Europe being Islamised, or is Islam being Europeanised?

I argued it's the latter in my essay for @financialtimes.com

www.ft.com/content/09f5...

William Morris's designs are said to reflect a 'very British take on pattern'. But how British were they really?
I wrote about the Victorian designer's Islamic inspirations for The Spectator

www.spectator.co.uk/article/will...

It may be a good time to read László Krasznahorkai, whose central preoccupation is the decomposition of the body politic.

In today's Guardian, I write about why the great Hungarian modernist's cryptic, cosmic visions no longer keep me awake at night.

www.theguardian.com/books/2024/n...