The Hollow Kingdom

A dispatch from London on the brink of chaos

I have spent the past week in London. The city’s transformation, which I had followed only abstractly in the newspapers, has prompted a visceral shock.

“I haven’t been to London since I was a student,” I told a group of British journalists. “What the hell happened?”

“The fact that you would ask such a question,” one responded, “is an act of racism.” The o…