World Affairs: Europe

What lies beneath

If Sarkozy banned the burqa, he himself would be oppressing the women who wear it. Making something invisible does not make it go away

Nothing is as it seems

The new Magritte Museum gives William Cook a fresh perspective on Brussels, the capital of surrealism

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The death of a dream

Andrew Brown has won the Orwell Prize for Fishing in Utopia, a memoir of life in Sweden. Here he talks to his friend Sigrid Rausing, herself a Swede, about what attracted him to Scandinavia and why he didn’t find the Jerusalem by the Baltic he had been expecting

The future of the Swedish model

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Losing your marbles

Observations on the Parthenon Marbles

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After the revolution

30 years on from the Islamic revolution, can sensible, sober diplomacy win out?

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Europe turns right as the progressive vote collapses

This should have been the perfect moment for centre-left parties to triumph

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This socialist paradise

After the truth

The Ryan Commission has revealed decades of child abuse within institutions run by the Irish Catholic Church. An Irish journalist explores where Catholicism in Ireland goes from here

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From riches to rags

Observations on Romanian rugby