For over a decade now, Israel and several of the Gulf monarchies have been moving closer together, a shared animus towards Iran being the most obvious driver pushing the UAE, Bahrain and, albeit more slowly, Saudi Arabia to align their regional security interests ever more closely with those of Israel.

George Floyd’s killing and the protests that followed it are being described as the latest episode in a centuries-old history of racial conflict.

In the neoliberal 1990s Hollywood became the model for elite American universities. Celebrity academics, paid much more than their colleagues in secretive deals, were part of a financing formula that included large capital projects like recreational facilities, satellite campuses and terms abroad.

In recent weeks, UK citizens have been regularly assured that government policy related to the Covid-19 pandemic is ‘guided by the science’. Given that many of the policies rolled out relate to ‘social distancing’, it is striking that one type of science—‘social science’—has remained largely absent from the airwaves.

Excerpt from Chapter 10 of An African in Imperial London: The Indomitable Life of A.B.C. Merriman-Labor.

In the middle of August 1918, the H.M.S. Mantua was only two days into its familiar route from the Royal Navy Base in Devonport, England, to Sierra Leone when influenza broke out on board.

Pandemic, it seems, is not a word to be used lightly.

For several weeks now, the novel coronavirus outbreak that began in Wuhan in December has been spreading steadily from person-to-person and from country to country.