To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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The Chagos Betrayal
Damning indictment of Britain's role in evicting islanders from their homeland
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
BRITAIN acquired the Chagos Islands via a treaty signed after defeating Napoleon in 1814 and subsequently governed them from another British colony, Mauritius.
In 1965, Britain bought the Chagos archipelago from the now self-governing Mauritius — though it was still a colony — for a mere £660,000. The aim was to create the British Indian Ocean Territory to provide its ally the US with a military base in the region. The archipelago was then leased to the US until 2016, later extended until 2036.
As a consequence, from 1965 to 1973 the inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago were forcibly removed from their homeland and dumped in Mauritius and Seychelles. “We must surely be very tough about this ... there will be no indigenous population except the seagulls,” Baron Wright of the foreign and commonwealth office ominously declared in August 1966.
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