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Issue No. 25

The View from There

For the past month, France has been paralyzed by train and subway strikes. Many people walk four hours a day to go to work and back…

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Lannister’s Greatest Battle Yet In a post-Thrones world, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has become a climate warrior

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Beethoven at 250

Ezra Pound once described classic literature as “news that stays news.” If I had to choose a composer whose music most often continues to give us “news,” I would pick Ludwig van Beethoven. Bach’s work is more perfectly constructed; Mozart’s is more miraculously balanced; Wagner may have been an even more influential figure (for good and ill)—and, of course, many other composers have written extraordinary pieces. But Beethoven is so gigantic, so utterly all over the place, so human—by turns funny, furious, warmly affectionate, unreachably isolated—that he seems the musician who forever inspires both the question “What the hell did he mean by that?” and the desire to investigate further. READ ON

Bette Midler perches on the shoulder of a giant bust of Ludwig van Beethoven, born 250 years ago. The turn of the decade marks a year’s worth of concerts honoring the composer, beginning with his Piano Concerto No. 3, to be conducted by the Berlin Philharmonic’s Kirill Petrenko from January 9 to 11.

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Discover

Boris’s Bunny Boiler The British P.M.’s onetime American friend Jennifer Arcuri wants to publish diaries detailing their trysts and telephone calls

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Small Talk
“I hate this stupid place.”

Shades of Blue:
Part II
A P.I. gets a call from a woman who saw him on TV. The job: Find her son’s killer. The police investigation fell apart eight years earlier. He takes the case …

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Style

Villa Envy

Foreigners can buy a village town house in Sicily for the price of an espresso. And get a tax cut
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Must-See Events

The Blogger Who Brought Down a Government Malta’s “one-woman WikiLeaks” believed she was on the trail of a massive conspiracy. She was right

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Small Talk

All Woke and No Play Academics retaliate against P.C. censorship terrorists with panic buttons

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Style

Life’s a Bal Intriguing beauties, unforgettable couture, talked-about escorts—for 25 years, le Bal des Débutantes has celebrated it all. Its photographer and chronicler reminisces

Small Talk
“You can always spot the tourists.”

France’s New Victor Hugo The country’s Oscar entry takes on class and race in the streets of Paris

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Marie Kondo On the titles worth keeping on your magically tidied-up bookshelf

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Fashion Backward Little Women inspires designers and influencers to embrace flounces, bodices, and prairie gowns

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Small Talk
“Race, gender, and sex are off limits, but the last time I looked, you can still discriminate on the basis of food preference.”

Michael Kiwanuka With his new album, he’s being compared to Stevie Wonder and Solomon Burke—and moving beyond the shadow of Big Little Lies

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Books

The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, the Wordsworths and Their Year of Marvels

by Adam Nicolson
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Africa’s World War

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Murder, They Wrote

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Small Talk
“The paper says that pro-Trump letters will no longer be edited for clarity.”

Criminal Minds The author of a new book on Dorothy L. Sayers reflects on the magic born of the novelist’s collaboration with her fellow Oxford women

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Travel

Beware of Falling Meteorites Namibia is rich in vistas, suffused in planetary history, and, incidentally, a fine place to contemplate the infinite

Best

Flags Out

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would force the United States into World War II. As President Franklin Roosevelt had said almost a year earlier to Congress, on January 6, “At no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today.” Roosevelt then enumerated the four freedoms that were necessary for a nation to survive. Working from his home in Arlington, Vermont, Norman Rockwell, one of America’s most celebrated artists and illustrators, labored throughout the next year to complete a series of paintings for The Saturday Evening Post that illustrated those principles. READ ON

Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech, which ran in the February 20, 1943, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. “Norman Rockwell: American Freedom” is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, through March 22.

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Discover
View With a Room

Sundy Days Natural wonders abound at Sundy Praia, a beachfront resort on the island of Príncipe


John Lorimer A war hero who survived a seemingly hopeless mission to eliminate a Nazi warship with a midget submarine

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Is Edited By

Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley

Deputy Editors

Chris Garrett Michael Hainey George Kalogerakis Nathan King

Design Director

Angela Panichi

Chief Technology Officer

John Tornow

Books Editor

Jim Kelly

Arts Intel Report Editor

Laura Jacobs

Style Editor

Ashley Baker

Articles Editor

Ash Carter

Senior Editor

Julia Vitale

Columnists

Cazzie David Emma Freud Walter Isaacson
Pico Iyer John Lahr James Wolcott

Photo Director

Ann Schneider

Cartoon Editor

Bob Mankoff

Music Supervisor

Randall Poster

Assistant Editors

Elena Clavarino Clementine Ford Alex Oliveira

International Editor

Isabelle Harvie-Watt

London Editor

Bridget Arsenault

Copy Editor

Adam Nadler

Photo Editor

Emine Gozde Sevim

Production Editor

H. Scott Jolley

Associate Editor

Elinor Schneider

Chief Operating Officer

Bill Keenan

Chief Marketing Officer

Emily Davis

Brand Partnerships

Anjali Lewis

Financial & Business Operations

Marc Leyer

Integrated Marketing Manager

Madeline Spates

Issue No. 25
January 4, 2020
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Issue No. 25
January 4, 2020

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