The website of James Harkin, author of Niche, Cyburbia and Big Ideas
Death to the Dictator!: Witnessing Iran’s Election and the Crippling of the Islamic Republic by Afsaneh Moqadam Bodley Head, 134 pp, £10.99, May 2010, ISBN 978 1 84792 146 8 The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov Allen Lane, 408 pp, £14.99, January 2011, … Continue reading
Thursday 26 March 2009, day 66 of Barack Obama’s presidency, may be remembered as the moment at which his clean-living administration went to pot. The occasion was the launch of Obama’s online town hall, Open for Questions, designed to build … Continue reading
Stanley Kubrick’s 1956 film The Killing follows a prickly collection of gangsters as they plan to rob a racetrack of millions of dollars. The way that it follows them, however, was considered most unusual at the time. Right from the … Continue reading
Twenty years ago, the American novelist Paul Auster wrote a short novel that turned out to be eerily prophetic. The story was about a man – known only as Blue – who is approached by a stranger called White and … Continue reading
In Stanislaw Lem’s novel, The Futurological Congress, published in 1971, Ijon Tichy, a Russian cosmonaut on his way to an international gathering of futurologists in the developing world, is so badly wounded in the crossfire of a local revolution that … Continue reading
Anyone remember Bagpuss? For the uninitiated, Bagpuss was a lackadaisical toy cat who slept in the window of an antiques shop. Only after the shop closed did Bagpuss shake himself into life, whereupon our furry friend began making merry in … Continue reading
In a recent newspaper interview, Kalle Lasn was interrogated about Adbusters, the Canadian anti-advertising magazine that he founded. The dialogue went like this: Do you think that Adbusters isn’t a brand? KL Well, I think that you can see it … Continue reading
New Statesman March 13, 2000 LENGTH: 1753 words HEADLINE: Sartre, Bogart and the last puff of freedom; Smoking once meant glamour and romance; now, the smoker is victim and polluter. By James Harkin BYLINE: James Harkin BODY: Imagine, as a … Continue reading
Late last year, for one night only, fans of the musical The Lion King were turned away from the Lyceum theatre in London’s West End. If they had been able to peer inside at the stage they would have witnessed … Continue reading
Sometime in the late 1980s, a British embassy vehicle was inching its way through the mountains of Balochistan in Pakistan when angry tribesmen barred its path. The tribespeople were in dispute with the government over water rights and when they … Continue reading
On April 21 last year, 12 miles outside Baghdad, a helicopter was shot from the sky by an obscure insurgent group calling itself the Islamic Army of Iraq. On board were 11 security guards and aircrew who had been working … Continue reading
It is six days after the Prince of Wales’s 55th birthday, but he has not had much time to celebrate. In the past week he has visited, among other places, a prison in Lancashire, an old people’s home in Gloucestershire … Continue reading
Outside the field rehabilitation clinic, the queue is growing uncharacteristically restless. Baked by the midday sun of a sweltering British summer, some are jostling for position, while others are beginning to encroach on the makeshift tent. Pandemonium threatens. A bearded, … Continue reading
Naomi Klein and I have only just met and already she is guilt-ridden. Her publisher told her that I grumbled about her choice of restaurant – the achingly healthy Neal’s Yard Salad Bar in Covent Garden. She’d thought, she tells … Continue reading
There is something about dining at an Oxbridge high table which makes conversation seem a little inadequate. Perhaps it is the surroundings. We are seated at the top of a magnificent dining hall in Trinity College, Cambridge, from which academics … Continue reading
The first thing you notice when having lunch with Gerry Adams is that people are prone to stare in the most peculiar way, as if the president of Sinn Fein were part celebrity and part leper. We have, however, chosen … Continue reading
William J Mitchell does not look much like a cyborg. When I meet him in London, in the bookshop of the imposing Royal Institute of British Architects building in Portland Place, he seems every inch the retiring, self-effacing middle-aged family … Continue reading
It is just past noon, and I am sitting at one of the best tables in one of London’s most sought-after restaurants – The Wolseley, where reservations need to be made weeks in advance – neatly decked out in an … Continue reading
Thomas L. Friedman is a writer in a hurry. He has arrived 15 minutes late for our lunch, and strides right past the fussing restaurant staff to shake my hand and sit down. Making up for lost time, he flicks … Continue reading
On December 20 last year, a Boeing 737 preparing for take-off in Colorado skidded off the runway, tumbled into a ravine and injured 38 people. Just moments after the accident, while his fellow passengers sat reflecting on their good fortune … Continue reading
This nudging stuff is nothing new – and it’s all a bit shaky The Guardian, Comment pages, 5 August 2008. Just like the wicked, there is going to be no rest for Conservative MPs this summer. Courtesy of David Cameron, … Continue reading
What does it mean to be a “libertarian paternalist” or a “transhumanist”? What is it like to live in an “experience economy”? When people murmur knowingly about something called “the wisdom of crowds”, what are they talking about? Is there … Continue reading
How much should one tip a prostitute? Dylan Jones, the editor of GQ and energetic man-about-town, is here to tell you the right thing to do. His book, Mr Jones’ Rules For the Modern Man, touts itself as a kind … Continue reading
Last week, as it does every year, Europe Day fell on May 9, marking the day in 1950 when Robert Schuman presented his suggestion for a united Europe. Few people, bar those employees of the European Commission in Brussels who … Continue reading
On Thursday March 16, in the first major restatement of its national security strategy for nearly four years, the White House identified Iran as the single greatest danger to US interests. In the same announcement, the US government reiterated its … Continue reading