A.E. Hotchner tells stories from the Ritz Hotel, Paris in Vanity Fair: “I remember one guest who, wanting to serve something very special to his 20 dinner guests, asked for a main course of elephant’s feet. We bought a surplus elephant from the zoo and served the feet”

In Foreign Policy, Rajiv Chandrasekaran on civilian employees on US bases in Afghanistan: instead of rebuilding the country they partied (and checked their emails)

Jeffrey Marlow on the pros and cons of building a new capital city for South Sudan from scratch, on Geographical

In The Paris Review, Randy Boyagoda on Enid Blyton’s influence in the colonies

Compiled by @TomasRuta