Belgium
The prescient politics of Tintin
Georges Remi, better known as Hergé, the creator of Tintin, was a failed journalist. His first job after leaving school…
The good soldier Maczek – a war hero betrayed
After fighting for the Allies in Hungary, France, Belgium and Holland, Stanislaw Maczek finds himself stripped of his Polish citizenship as a result of the Yalta conference
‘Now I have been made whole’: Lucy Sante’s experience of transition
Until the age of 66, Sante lived as a deeply divided man. In this story of self-realisation, she describes how transitioning finally ‘lifted the veil’ over her existence
Europe gripped by a fifth wave
How quickly things change. Just a month ago many EU countries were being praised for keeping some Covid restrictions in…
The manhunt dividing Belgium
Belgium’s leading virologist is in hiding, holed up with his family in a government safe house. The reason? A right-wing…
Strange, sinister and very Belgian: Léon Spilliaert at the Royal Academy reviewed
The strange and faintly sinister works of the Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert have been compared — not unreasonably — to…
Hollande equals Thatcher? If only
Have you ever tried discussing the merits of gun control with a Texan, or of deregulated labour markets with a…
On a British newspaper, Tintin would have been fired years ago
Reading Tintin when I was a child, in Britain in the 1970s, I always assumed Georges Remi’s creation was just…
A licence to kill - the slippery slope of 'assisted dying'
If you don’t think legalising ‘assisted dying’ is a slippery slope, you haven’t been paying attention
Woe betide you if you try to speak French in Flanders
Usually, one of the first indications that you’ve entered a bilingual country is that the road signs are in two…
Antwerp: the compact, charming capital of a country that doesn’t quite exist yet
Napoleon didn’t think much of Antwerp. ‘Scarcely a European city at all,’ he scoffed. If only he could see it…
Both Belgium and the United States should be called to account for the death of Patrice Lumumba
For decades, all the outside world knew was that Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader, had been done away with.…
A legendary piece of iconoclastic dance returns. Does the piece still stand up?
Funny how things turn upside-down with time. A work of contemporary dance that made an iconoclastic splash decades ago is…
Where Van Gogh learned to paint
William Cook reports from the sooty netherworld that made an artist of Vincent Van Gogh
The man who discovered Ebola
By some quirk of fate, just as news reached the papers that the Scottish nurse who had contracted Ebola while…
How will the British public take to Rubens’s fatties?
Are Rubens’s figures too fat for the British to appreciate them? Martin Gayford investigates
How Napoleon won at Waterloo
If you visit Waterloo today, there’s no question which general comes out on top
Expo 58, by Jonathan Coe - review
In 1958 a vast international trade fair was held just outside Brussels. As well as being a showcase for industry,…
