With a new biography, Fiona Sampson, a poet, hopes to change that. She argues that Sand should be thought of as “one of the great novelists of the 19th century”. Sand was prolific—she had to be, given she supported herself and various lovers by her pen—and over the course of a 45-year career she produced more than 50 novels, scores of essays, memoirs and plays, as well as thousands of letters. Ms Sampson argues that the vast body of work was influential, too, probing the inner lives of her female characters and containing “some of the first ecological literature and pioneering fictions of rural life”. Still, if Sand’s reputation has become “all personality, little art” it is mostly because she was an extraordinary person. Her life was eventful, scandalous even, from the get-go: her father, scion of a distinguished military family, married her mother, a former chorus girl, shortly before Sand was born. Her beloved father died in a riding accident when she was four. Many years later, when his grave was accidentally disturbed, Sand took the opportunity to clamber in and kiss his skull. After a spell in a convent as a teenager, Sand briefly considered taking religious vows. Instead she made vows of a different kind and, at 18, married a man who turned out to be boorish and violent. Before too long Sand left him—and her children—for Paris’s literary scene. She began collaborating with Jules Sandeau, a lover, and borrowing his name. But she soon struck out on her own. After an early hit with “Indiana”, publishers began competing for the rights to her work. “Becoming George” is a romp to read. This is partly because Sand was a libertine, and an extremely successful one at that. (She is on holiday with one paramour when he falls ill; while he is recovering, she seduces the doctor who has come to care for him.) It is also because Ms Sampson is a skilful writer, who deftly evokes the cultural firmament in which Sand lived and worked. She has an enjoyable turn of phrase, too: one man is described as “a sexless creature, something of a bulgy-eyed haddock”. Typhoid, she muses, “must be quite an effective prophylactic”. The biography, however, falls short of its intended aim. At times Ms Sampson tells, rather than shows, the reader that Sand’s works matter; more in-depth literary analysis would have bolstered her argument. Sand’s
personality remains more intriguing than her art. She emerges as an astonishingly modern hero—so much so that you wonder why there hasn’t been a Hollywood biopic about her in recent years. Nevertheless, some readers may still be tempted to pick up a copy of “Indiana”, “Lélia” or “Mauprat” after they have finished “Becoming George”. For Ms Sampson lays out just how many admirers Sand had, including the Brontë sisters, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Marcel Proust. Gustave Flaubert, who exchanged letters with Sand for many years, addressed his fellow writer as chère maître (dear master). After her death, he predicted that “Her name will live in unique glory as one of the great figures of France.” Any novelist with such a famous fanbase is surely worth a try. ■ For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//culture/2026/07/16/george-sands-life-was-a-heady-mix-of- sex-and-serious-fiction
The wild, gripping story of the Nord Stream pipeline bombing A technicolour account of the sabotage suggests how fast the world has changed July 16th 2026 The bombs were hidden in divers’ cylinders and lowered into the Baltic Sea. In freezing darkness they were fixed to the pipes that snaked along the sea floor from Russia to Germany. The timers were set. As Bojan Pancevski shows in his new book, the resulting explosions shook Europe’s economy and the Western alliance. Revisited today, those tanks are also time capsules, messages in a bottle from an already remote past. Known as Nord Stream 1 and 2, the twin tubes comprised the world’s longest undersea pipeline network when they were laid in 2011 and 2021 respectively. They were always controversial. By bypassing Ukraine, they
made it easier for the Kremlin to cut off its gas supplies without interrupting deliveries farther west. As Mr Pancevski writes in “The Nord Stream Conspiracy”, they were “giant tentacles” which “tied Germany and much of Europe to Russia” through dependence on Russian energy. The blasts that ruptured them in September 2022, seven months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, spewed up gas worth $2bn in giant geysers. The facts of the case have emerged patchily; Mr Pancevski, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, has dug out what he thinks is the full story. It is gripping. In this telling, the improvised, shoestring raid was conducted by a maverick Ukrainian special-forces unit which, like much of the country’s war effort, relied partly on private funding. It was led by an officer nicknamed “the madman” who had plotted warlords’ assassinations. His team included a heavily tattooed politician and ex-cop who had trained to be a priest. Among the divers was a dauntless former erotic model, whose boyfriend was scared away from Kyiv lest he distract her. The aim was to cut Russia’s export revenues and its influence on Europe. Equipped with fake IDs obtained from criminals in Bulgaria, a crew of seven rented a sloop on the German coast and sailed into the Baltic. To set
the bombs they plunged 80 metres into the murk, sometimes in a vicious storm. This book isn’t misty-eyed about Ukraine’s fractious security services and snakepit politics, noting the corruption and occasional brutality that blight them. But it honours the saboteurs’ ingenuity and bravery. The German police faced stonewalling and lies. Russia blamed America, which disliked Nord Stream, but, in this account, had got wind of the plan and tried to stop it. As Germany sent aid to Ukraine and took in refugees, the idea that the culprits might be Ukrainian was combustible. Still, the plods tracked down suspects using fingerprints, traffic cameras and facial- recognition software. A Ukrainian caught in Poland was sensationally released. Another was extradited from Italy and indicted on June 30th; German prosecutors explicitly—and explosively—say the attack was committed “on behalf of Ukrainian state authorities”. So the saga isn’t over. But the Nord Stream era is. It is only four years since the pipeline was blown up, yet it seems a relic of a distant age. Now it appears bonkers that—after Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and annexed Crimea—some Western statesmen thought it wise to strengthen his hold on Europe’s economy. His most terrible war has recast this episode and the preceding folly. Conversely, other aspects of the tale seem less incredible than they did. In four years the notion that war is waged beyond the battlefield has become commonplace. Undersea cables are damaged; Russian hackers target Western institutions; and amateur arsonists, recruited on social media, firebombed a house owned by Britain’s prime minister. Hybrid warfare is no longer a shock but an insidious rumbling reality. Conspiracism has likewise become more entrenched. The Nord Stream case features false-flag theories, subterfuge and cover-ups of a kind that seem unsurprising in the former Soviet world, where opacity has bred cynical mistrust. Paranoiacs in the West have long thought this way, too; as these worlds bleed together, ever more people do. From another angle this book is a dispatch from a separate battle—between shoe-leather journalism and the forces, commercial and technological, which threaten it. For this is really a chronicle of three feats: the sabotage, the
police inquiry and the author’s stupendous investigative reporting. On the record, every Ukrainian cited here denies bombing Nord Stream. Yet Mr Pancevski’s sources and perseverance let him reconstruct the mission in technicolour. No AI chatbot will ever match that. ■ For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//culture/2026/07/10/the-wild-gripping-story-of-the-nord- stream-pipeline-bombing
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Economic & financial indicators | Indicators Economic data, commodities and markets July 16th 2026
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Humphrey Smith dictated what a good pub should be The lord high brewer of Tadcaster died on June 19th, aged 81 July 16th 2026 What makes an ideal English pub? In a book review of 1946, George Orwell knew. In his favourite, The Moon Under Water, the clientele were mostly “regulars”, “who occupy the same chair every evening and go there for conversation as much as for the beer”. The fittings were “uncompromisingly Victorian”, from the grained woodwork to the cast-iron fireplaces. The house had neither a radio nor a piano, and any singing “is of a decorous kind”. Humphrey Smith took this to heart. As owner for nearly four decades of the proudly independent Samuel Smith Old Brewery in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire (estd. 1758), he wanted his pubs to fit Orwell’s template. And