George Monbiot writes an article that I completely agree with.

10) Reclaiming Democracy: Civil Society and Electoral Change in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Joerg Forbrig and Pavol Demeš ( Read more... )

Those of you who are professional editors, or who speak Arabic, or who just like laughing at extremist rigt-wingers when they do something stupid, will appreciate this: In order to forge closer ties with its political friends in the Middle Eastern Islamic countries, the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) printed the September issue of its party organ, ( Read more... )

2) White Eagles over Serbia, by Lawrence Durrell

A more serious effort by Durrell here than his collection of humorous diplomatic stories which also drew on his time in Belgrade. The cover describes it as being in the genre of John Buchan but in fact I think it's pretty obvious that Durrell was trying to cash in on the James Bond phenomenon ( ( Read more... )

15) Esprit de Corps: Sketches from Diplomatic Life, by Lawrence Durrell

Well, when I discovered that Lawrence Durrell had written a book of humorous short stories set in the British Embassy in Belgrade in the early 1950s, I absolutely had to hunt it down via the on-line second-hand books resources. Well, one cannot call it Great Literature, and he ( Read more... )

If you tune into The World Tonight, on Radio 4 in half an hour (or stream it from the BBC website) there's a fairly good chance you will hear me. Am setting off for the studio now.

Today is the Day Of Statehood Of Serbia And Montenegro - probably the last one...

Milosevic dead?

Hey, I got in today's Guardian!

A few weeks ago we published a report on the EU visa regime for the Balkans, arguing that it needs to be liberalised and that the EU's policies are deeply counter-productive. It's had a number of very positive spin-offs, including contact with a Novi Sad NGO who have been collecting the most insane examples of EU bureaucracy in action for honest ( Read more... )