Georgia's cultural world has been a reliable canary for the oxygen left in the country's democracy. I wrote about Tbilisi's beautiful Writers' House, and what the political appointment of its new director says about the country's authoritarian trajectory ft.com/content/3c9162…

Another sad and beautiful story on Georgia from Nadia Beard ft.com/content/3c9162…

Georgia's central bank has effectively shielded a former prosecutor sanctioned by the US for doing Russia's bidding in Georgia. The sanctions are the firmest evidence yet that corroborates rumours of FSB infiltration in Georgian politics. My story – ft.com/content/8d7656…

A new recording by the 97-year-old American pianist Ruth Slenczynska piqued Nadia Beard’s interest. If the past few decades of classical music were an era that fetishised the child prodigy, have we now entered an era of the older virtuoso? on.ft.com/4b4SSeE

“For Russia it’s clear. Either as an artist you’re protesting or you’re decorating the regime. Both exist. An in-between does not.” Revisit this profile of Russian artists in exile by Nadia Beard. codastory.com/rewriting-hist…

The Russian artist Andrei Molodkin’s new project is called “Dead Man’s Switch.” The dead man in question is Julian Assange; the switch will be set off if he dies in prison, destroying millions of dollars worth of artwork. nyer.cm/aJoKQxn

There's been a sinister atmosphere in Tbilisi this summer following the passage of the foreign agent law this spring and the brutal crackdown on those who opposed it. For The New Yorker this week, I wrote about the knife edge Georgia finds itself on -- newyorker.com/news/dispatch/…

Georgians are bracing for a crucial election this October. Will the opposition stave off the country’s turn to Russian-style authoritarianism?nyer.cm/osECAgN

Opportunity for early-career journalists 👇🏽

For this week's FT Weekend I wrote about a new biography on the troublesome Gauguin, and what the lost manuscript of his memoir that recently resurfaced after decades reveals

My story in last weekend's Financial Times: on the notion of an anti-elite opera and artistic ambiguity as antidote to the dogma of our times ft.com/content/aec118…

In the Financial Times this week, I wrote about a new book on the way the Russian state has, for centuries, co-oped the Orthodox church to bolster its power and its wars, an alliance, as one theologian put it, “between the missile and the incense burner.”

A grim first story of the year -- a song cycle that made its orchestral debut this week and the murders that inspired it. An important musical project on gender-based violence by Joshua Hopkins Margaret E Atwood Jake Heggie ft.com/content/b66242…

What does music gain from or lose to technology? on.ft.com/4cP4vHJ

I love this festival. I’m underdressed because, though I’m in Georgia, my luggage is somewhere in Paris. #Zegfest

Hard to choose a favourite session in an extraordinary line-up ZEG Storytelling Festival this year, but this one is up there. Khalid Abdalla in conversation with Ghaith about Palestine, resistance and the insatiable addictiveness of freedom

My story in this week's National Geographic: on Glarus in Switzerland, one of the few places in the world still practicing 'direct democracy', which somehow keeps trust high and polarization low—even in today’s divided world nationalgeographic.com/culture/articl…

This week’s TLS, featuring Richard NortonTaylor and Eric Rauchway on US national security; Trevor Pateman on ‘Captain’ Warner; Alicia Rix on Henry James; Nadia Beard on Shostakovich; Emma Greensmith on Homer; Harriet Rix on oak trees; Barbara Heldt on Marina Tsvetaeva – and more

'Shostakovich Discoveries generates a certain amount of historical anxiety: what do our creative suppressions say about us, decades after we’re no longer there to mitigate their effect?' Nadia Beard (Nadia Beard): Dancing in Stalin’s shadow the-tls.com/arts/music/sho…