Search

1488 results

How the British made the NHS their religion

essays

The decay and renewal of the American constitutional order

essays

The Revolt of the European Masses: the disintegration of accountability in supra-national politics

essays

Space and the new struggle for civilisational supremacy

essays

Iain Macleod — short-serving chancellor and lost Tory leader

portraits

Sigmar Hillelson — the German Jewish pioneer behind the BBC’s Arabic broadcasts

portraits

Russia in 2020: alternative scenarios of the near future

essays

Mobilising for the moment

essays

America’s problem with unconventional warfare

essays

Mental health’s expanding empire

book-review

The paradox of liberal individualism

essays

Internationalism’s moral fallacies

notebook

Future proof

essays

World order — improvised by design

essays

Realism meets reality

book-review

Challenging the ‘Great Reset’ theory of pandemics

essays

An Oceanic Order for the Twenty-First Century

essays

A government of laws

essays

Covid-19 and the moral case for personal judgement

essays

The Elizabethan era is laid to rest

essays

The roots of South Korea’s crisis

essays

Dumbarton Oaks: creating a new world order

essays

What does the future of evolution look like?

essays

The geopolitics and grand strategy of Alfred Thayer Mahan

essays

Doing our duty at home and abroad — A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid by Peter Hennessy review

book-review

The constitutional casualties of the French election

notebook

Ancient lessons for modern crisis

essays

The Singapore way

essays

To avoid a dictatorship of scholars

essays

The return of great power diplomacy

essays

Rethinking the Meiji Restoration

essays

Inside the disinformation forever war

essays

Did civilisation add to the quality of human life?

essays

The US-Japan alliance – its past, present and unclear future

essays

Did nationalism exist in the classical world?

essays

America’s return as the reluctant defender of the liberal order

essays

Can democracy and genetic engineering co-exist?

essays

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy revisited

essays

The forgotten lessons of First World War strategy

essays

The crusader of good will

essays

The West needs to wake up

essays

The Soviet military was a hollow colossus

essays

The endless frontier

essays

The Nation in Arms: Myth or reality?

essays

Why Finns Joined The Fight

essays

The Czechoslovak agent in the BBC who almost was

essays

The new struggle for space

essays

Towards an Arcadian future

essays

The fragile equilibrium of technology, liberty and power

essays

As the Arctic thaws, are we able to keep its peace?

essays

Human nature and European civilisation

essays

The future of war is here

essays

Foes into friends: Germany’s role in postwar European integration

essays

2020: Putting our pandemic in perspective

essays

Kamala Harris and the empty language of international order

notebook

From broken windows to bulldozers

essays

What the Paris Olympics opening ceremony really meant

notebook

The method and madness of Ancient Greek medicine

notebook

Trump’s gamble

notebook

The Bonn Summit and the road to globalisation

essays

Alternative international orders: a modern Holy Alliance for the twenty-first century

essays

Bringing beauty back to the city

essays

Erdogan prepares to leave the stage

essays

The Australian way of war and peace

essays

Battling for the best and brightest: immigration, great power rivalry, and the history of talent importation

essays

America – nation of myth-makers

essays

How America became the world’s Leviathan

book-review

1821 and the invention of world order

essays

Ruling the waves

essays

Why the nation beat the empire in the battle of 19th century ideas

essays

The Spy and the State

essays

When the Founding Fathers opposed the Supreme Court

notebook

How mechanical refrigeration changed the world

essays

How 1970s California created the modern world

essays

Why applied history matters

essays

The third way: How different is the Swedish model?

essays

Between Westernisers and Slavophiles – the search for Russia’s soul

essays

Regime change and the breaking of alliances

essays

Breaking the nuclear taboo

essays

Outside in, inside out: Russia as an empire on the periphery

essays

The carrot and the stick — geo-economics and Russian revisionism

essays

Fighting in the shadows

essays

Three victories and a defeat

essays

Vienna: the crucible of the modern world

essays

Globalisation: why it went into retreat

essays

This crisis has the capacity to be apocalyptic

essays

The paradox of nuclear strategy

essays

Geopolitics never went away for the United States

essays

The fake history of civilisational states

essays

Ukraine on the move: a century of migration

essays

China: The great uncoupling

essays

Syria’s rebels won the war – can they win the peace?

essays

America’s National Guard, a history of heroism and violence

notebook

How war created the nation state and yet could destroy it

essays

Contradictions at the heart of an expanding Europe

essays

A little history of the modern Middle East

essays

How China learned to love the bomb

essays

The Empire strikes back

essays

A real Russian heart: Aleksandr Dugin, Vladimir Putin and the dangerous new Russian ideology

essays

The Future of Europe: secular but not secularist, diverse but not divided

essays

The timely return of Henry Clay

notebook

The US President’s daily dose of intelligence

essays

The price of freedom

essays

Why wars keep happening

essays

Hong Kong’s secret world of spies

notebook

A political lesson from Lord Rockingham

portraits

Why Scotland lost its tongue

essays

The history of sport contains multitudes

essays

The fall and rise of Marwan Barghouti

essays

The twilight of the Arab state

essays

Why we don’t remember pandemics

notebook

The old republic of Europe

essays

To the far side of the Moon: the battle for lunar resources

essays

How Ukraine is winning in the adaptation battle against Russia

essays

Kissinger: the ultimate realist

essays

Reappraising NATO, 1956 style

essays

The flag wars are here to stay

essays

The subtle art of English comedy

essays

Russia’s Scramble for Africa

book-review

Meritocracy v the people

essays

The gerontology of power

essays

The war for hearts and minds: the evolution of al-Qaeda’s media strategy

essays

Undersea cables and the vulnerability of American power

essays

Le Pen and France’s past, present and future

notebook

The quest for Croatia

book-review

An ode to the ODNB

notebook

What is the purpose of existence?

essays

Islam and the contingency of politics

essays

The misfortunes of war

essays

Xi Jinping’s moment of truth

essays

Infrastructure power

essays

Continuity Thatcher: rescuing a complex leader from historical cliché

essays

The invention of Catherine the Great

essays

How the British elite lost its way

essays

Bond or Blofeld: war, espionage and secrecy in the twenty-first century

essays

The White Revolutionaries

essays

Digital revolution: a splash in the cognitive space?

essays

Can warfare ever be considered modern?

essays

The road to Auschwitz

book-review

The Balkan Question

essays

Towards a Westphalia for the Middle East

essays

The Sandbaggers: the greatest spy show ever?

notebook

Traitorous Blake motivated by Cold War convictions

essays

Total football — from catenaccio to gegenpressing it’s about openness to ideas

notebook

When disaster strikes

essays

Sport is more than just a game

essays

‘We need to see these terrorist groups through their own mindsets’ — in conversation with John Sawers

essays

The many meanings of culture

essays

Tradition meets aesthetics: the meaning of modern rituals

essays

From Saartjie Baartman to Dolly the Sheep: what does genetic integrity mean?

essays

The Slavic War according to Stalin

essays

From miracles to massacres – Japan’s tumultuous 20th century

essays

The Saddam files and the battle for Iraqi history

essays

Between frustrated Wagnerians and unsatisfied Schopenhauerians – what does Nietzsche reveal about decadence?

essays

Geopolitics of a pandemic

essays

The Arab Awakening: when the dream met reality

essays

The making of modern Ukraine

essays

The looming crisis of an Electoral College tie

notebook

A world of nations and states is here to stay

essays

How US policy failure post-9/11 undermined international order

essays

A tale of three generals — how the Ukrainian military turned the tide

essays

Tony Blair and the tragedy of liberal interventionism

essays

The indispensable foreign correspondent

essays

Power and prudence in American statecraft

book-review

Jacques Rueff’s quest for monetary order

essays

Seeing the big picture — how Russia’s past guides its grand strategy

essays

Imagining the endgame of the US-China rivalry

essays

What did it mean to belong to the Holy Roman Empire?

essays

The last days of the Fifth Republic

notebook

How companies go to war

essays

Rousseau and the barbarity of education

essays

Great Books: E.H. Carr’s Nationalism and After

book-review

Minority report

book-review

The making of an 18th-century peace deal

essays

Karel Čapek’s robots took on a life of their own

notebook

Wise warnings matter even more in this age of pandemics and big data

essays

Spies as agents of peace

essays

What is mistake theory and can it save the humanities?

essays

An uncertain idea of Britain

notebook

Welcome to the fifth age of the city

essays

Orwell in all weathers

notebook

How Jewish leaders have defied the political odds

notebook

Ukraine’s success in Kharkiv forced Putin’s hand

notebook

Learning from the big, bold 1990s debates over the post-Cold War world

notebook

Armenia’s existential moment

essays

The swift death of Gorbachev’s USSR set Russia on a path to chaos

essays

The Houthis’ forgotten war goes global

essays

Thucydides was a Realist

essays

The conflict between states and the US federal government is nothing new

notebook

Rewiring the world

essays

Japanese architecture – building the impossible

essays

Meet the Zoomer generation

essays

Why human agency matters

essays

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin — the first and only British woman to win a Nobel Prize in science

portraits

The intelligent use of history — what is the past good for?

essays

The Caliphate: the persistence of a brutal ideology

essays

Four paths to Israel’s intelligence failure

notebook

Imperial Miasma Theory

essays

Hacktivism’s Cold War Turns Hot

essays

Books of the Year

book-review

Information war does not exist

essays

How to do statecraft

essays

American democracy can help fix America’s broken society

essays

The human need for war

essays

The restless search for fun wars

essays

Christopher Coker, 1953-2023

notebook

The idea of Syria is worth saving

notebook

Rethinking geopolitics

essays

Four reasons to study Polybius — most practical of ancient historians

essays

Liberty at risk as threats to freedom grow

essays

Finding Garibaldi

essays

The cultural conversation of mankind

essays

How Arcadia was won and lost and found again

essays

Christopher Lasch – contrarian critic of America’s elites

portraits

Geopolitics of the tempest

notebook

Books of the Year 2024

book-review

How private intelligence companies became the new spymasters

essays

The visionary potential of the Biblical legacy

essays

How to fix the future, Estonian style

essays

The deep historical roots of Russia’s militarisation of the Arctic

notebook

On civility

essays

John Perry Barlow and the struggle for the independence of cyberspace

essays

The new space race: Africa’s cosmic ambitions

essays

Inside Russia’s forever war against Ukraine

essays

On the myth of multiculturalism

essays

Why America goes to war

essays

Ukraine and the West: an alliance by proxy

notebook

Frederick Selous, the archetypal great white hunter

portraits

Can the US make the world safe for democracy?

essays

Nuclear war must become unthinkable — again

essays

Kharkiv’s culture unbowed

notebook

Trust is the key to geopolitical strength

essays

In the shadow of George Wallace: America’s third-party challenge

notebook

Lawrence of Arabia on war: How the past haunts the present

essays

Can Europe come to NATO’s defence?

essays

Macron’s very French gambit

notebook

Containing and deterring Russia: can Europe act strategically?

essays

Where does esotericism belong in modern academia and what is its purpose?

essays

Modern France and the ghosts of the past

essays

The strange death of private life

essays

What drives Vladimir Putin?

essays

The Passion of Hilma af Klint

essays

Dealing with the past – a Russian history

essays

Liberty under attack from enemies within

essays

The age of gerontocracy is nothing new

essays

Nehemiah Wallington – Puritan chronicler had far less fun than Pepys

portraits

Head, hand and heart

essays

Gustav Stresemann — The man who almost saved the world

portraits

How bro-world conquered America

essays

Getting the CIA in working order

book-review

The malevolent spirit of Ebrahim Raisi

notebook

The spies make their case

notebook

Five Eyes: the past, present and future of the world’s key intelligence alliance

essays

Kissinger: a man of three centuries

notebook

Jimmy Carter, orphan of the American Century

portraits

Eugene Onegin’s entropic beauty

book-review

Counting the cost of the 1918-19 pandemic

essays

Inside Russia’s forever war with the West

notebook

De Gaulle’s world in motion

essays

Georgian nightmare

essays

Ukraine, the future of war is now

notebook

Britain’s war requiem

essays

An intimate glimpse of President Trump

book-review

The Habsburg world we have lost

book-review

Why Assad’s fall took the world by surprise

notebook

Austria: nation, state or empire?

essays

How Israel reset the energy map

essays

The end of the Atlanticist Era

notebook

Japan, AUKUS and the future of Western defence

notebook

China’s innovation paradox

notebook

Inside the Collective Unconscious

essays

The Church of the Almost Believers

essays

The problem of power in Russia

essays

The past, an enduring guide to the future

essays

The revolutionary meaning of Maundy Thursday

notebook

Equality – what is it good for?

essays

Is there hope for Russia after Putin?

essays

The vitality of Western civilisation

essays

How the state can do more for less

essays

Charles Johnston: British diplomat who used a poet’s eye to fix the final phase of empire

portraits

The high price of Trump’s energy

notebook

Democracy in crisis: Lessons from Ancient Athens

essays

Noël Coward the spy

portraits

How LBJ stepped back

notebook

Henry Kissinger at 100: a century of service

notebook

Richard Aldington — the war poet who rejected moral certainties about conflict

portraits

Kafka’s goodbye to Berlin

notebook

How to revive our reading culture

notebook

The triumph of the Motherland

essays

Sir Alexander Cadogan — Churchill’s indispensable man

portraits

The Queen, Stoicism and the defence of the Faith

notebook

America must find its middle ground

notebook

Pope Leo XIII, steward of a vanished world

portraits

The story of the Jesuits — how the Society of Jesus charted the world

essays

Robert Adam and building beautiful

essays

On guard: the contemporary salience of military fortification

essays

George Orwell’s idea of civilisation

essays

The Platinum Jubilee — the joys of Pomp and Circumstance

notebook

Ukraine can win the peace

essays

How to negotiate with China

essays

Terror, misperception and America’s road to Iraq

book-review

The enduring mystery of the Zinoviev Letter

notebook

EI Weekly Listen — Andrew Preston on the invention of American national security

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — Philip Bobbitt on the decay and renewal of the US constitutional order

podcasts

Europe’s reckoning with history

notebook

Irrational Rationalists: Pythagoras matters

notebook

J.M. Coetzee’s absence without leave

notebook

Is our religion of love doing more harm than good?

essays

Great Power competition is going nuclear again

essays

Joe Biden and the long shadow of the Vietnam War

essays

France fragmented

notebook

1975, the year that made the modern world

essays

Yosano Akiko — a great of modern Japanese poetry

portraits

Making sense of the Yemen War

essays

George Carver, the CIA’s man in Vietnam

portraits

The march of the sovereign individuals

notebook

The gods in love

essays

Hamas takes the nihilistic path of Islamist terror

notebook

Britain’s energy transition in the shadow of the 1970s

essays

Why Putin is haunted by the spectre of Polish power

essays

Europe needs a grand strategy

essays

Navigating the new nuclear age

notebook

Christianity in a cold climate – Jesuit encounters with Japan

essays

Ernest Bevin and the spiritual dimension of British foreign policy

essays

What makes a man die for his country?

essays

Who’s seeing your data and why?

essays

The world that saltpetre built

essays

Will machines make strategy?

essays

Peak China may be closer than we think

notebook

In search of Lebensraum

essays

When did sexual decadence lose its association with social decline?

essays

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Warrior of the liberal centre

portraits

The Monarchy International

book-review

What pushed Sweden away from socialism?

notebook

Walk on the wild side

book-review

Inside the world of medieval espionage

essays

Reassessing Christian history

essays

Matisse’s second life

book-review

Confucius, competition and modern China’s misuse of meritocracy

essays

The golden age of the supernatural

book-review

Betty Webb, the humble codebreaker who helped to defeat the Nazis

portraits

Know your enemy

essays

Angus MacLean – father, soldier, liberator

portraits

Canada cannot escape geopolitics

essays

The bitter legacy of Israel’s West Bank settlement

essays

Fighting for freedom against the odds

essays

The quest for an American honours system

notebook

The economy and the paradox of technology

essays

History while it’s still smoking

essays

Globalisation — lessons from George Canning on how to remake trade

essays

Gazing back to see China’s future

essays

The Stalinist who wrote the playbook for French foreign policy

notebook

The People’s Republic of SF

essays

Palestine, pragmatism and the lessons of 1956

essays

Russia’s century of scientific autarky

essays

History shows a perilous path lies ahead for Kamala Harris

essays

Saxony and the return of the Third Germany

essays

A team of rivals empowers a president

notebook

Russia’s global grip on nuclear energy

notebook

When free trade falters

essays

Joachim Burwitz, spymaster of the Baltic world

portraits

Troubled waters

essays

Middle Powers: don’t write off Britain and Japan

notebook

Jane the Virgin: Metafictional telenovela par excellence

notebook

The trials of a president

essays

Conducting is Finland’s soft superpower

notebook

Putin’s Game: How did so many in the West get Russia so wrong?

essays

Locked arms: looming threats to the Romania-NATO partnership

notebook

City-states are back

notebook

Geopolitics — the key to understanding Russia foreign policy

essays

The Eurasian Century, Part IV: Cold War

essays

How manga shapes Japanese identity

essays

Ignacio Sánchez Mejías — sensationalist matador who brought celebrity to the corrida

portraits

Have Realists lost their way?

book-review

AI’s attention deficit

essays

Fiction for a future war

essays

Why do democracies decay?

essays

What does Xi Jinping really think?

essays

The Entente Cordiale: bad history but good politics

essays

Puccini’s battle of darkness and light

notebook

Will AI revolutionise education?

essays

Playing with demons — how thought experiments guide scientific innovation

essays

The West needs to boost its industrial capacity fast

notebook

The centrist as saviour

notebook

In search of Mitteleuropa’s lost nobility

book-review

Living with the Great Plague of 1665

essays

Macaulay and the lost optimism of Victorian history

essays

Untold knowledge: the price of deforestation

essays

The dissident’s dilemma

essays

Spirit-lands and tyrant-kings: differing tales of statehood

essays

Russia’s tragedy is a warning to us all

essays

Taking Pushkin off his pedestal

essays

Japan’s time of monsters

essays

The beatification of Prigozhin and the fight for the future of Russia

essays

The new great power competition for minerals

notebook

The art of Siena: a question of perspective

book-review

Alasdair MacIntyre’s philosophy for a new dark age

notebook

George McGhee – American father to Britain’s Suez Crisis

portraits

The mythical Burma of Maurice Collis

notebook

Fritz Mannheimer – stockbroker of peace

portraits

Authority without knowledge

essays

Tobias Smollett – a life in caricature

portraits

Queen Elizabeth II — the end of a glorious reign

notebook

Napoleonic Europe: how the Emperor built a continent

essays

Russell Leffingwell – guardian of the American century

portraits

Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

essays

From the Silk Road to the information superhighway

essays

Information loss

essays

Lifting Italy’s classical music curse

essays

Banishing Pétain’s ghost

book-review

Israel’s hostage dilemma

notebook

Julian ‘the Apostate’: antiquity’s most prolific self-publicist

book-review

Ismail Kadare walked the line

essays

Margaret Thatcher – the fall, thirty years on

essays

Ernest Benn against the Census and the forces of Bumbledom

notebook

The honourable men of the House of Morgan – J.P Morgan & Co and the Crisis of Capitalism by Martin Horn review

book-review

In defence of the Habsburgs

essays

Decline in three dimensions

essays

Careless posts cost lives

notebook

Civilisation and Auschwitz are not a contradiction in terms

essays

History’s soundtrack: America’s swinging musical diplomacy

notebook

The greatest sportsman you have never heard of

notebook

What Israel does next — in conversation with Dennis Ross

notebook

Did the Enlightenment fail?

book-review

The long war between Israel and Hizbollah

essays

The hidden lives of Samurai women

essays

The many ways of seeing Saint Monica

portraits

Enid Bagnold — trailblazing novelist whose greatest novel launched Elizabeth Taylor’s career

portraits

EI Weekly Listen — the fake history of civilisational states by Christopher Coker

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — The Revolt of the European Masses: the disintegration of accountability in supra-national politics by Janne Haaland Matlary

podcasts

The enduring spirit of cricket

notebook

The other side of the hill

essays

The Suez Canal Purchase and the making of modern Britain

essays

Armenia, Azerbaijan on the brink – again

notebook

The end of history ends

essays

Thomas Jefferson’s spirit of scientific endeavour is what America needs today

essays

The beginning of a reckoning: the Middle East after 7 October

essays

America’s retreat from free trade

book-review

The Genocide Convention and its discontents

notebook

A Russian nation struggles to be born

notebook

The importance of the individual in history

essays

China’s takeover of Western capitalism

essays

Adam Smith: the first anti-capitalist?

essays

Chemical weapons and war: the growing threat

notebook

Show goes on for Ukrainian opera

notebook

Will Georgia’s geopolitical hedging pay off?

essays

Who are the Basques?

notebook

South Korea’s crisis could be a geopolitical catastrophe

notebook

The price of Iran’s nuclear prestige

essays

Why liberal democracies win total wars

essays

German resistance to sending Leopards will be long remembered

notebook

Epic news

essays

Do we really know what war is anymore? — The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide To The New Way of War by Mark Galeotti review

book-review

Reclaiming Christian freedom for the modern age

essays

Vienna’s vapour trail

book-review

JFK’s abiding legacy

essays

Inside Iran’s election circus

notebook

The crisis of progressivism

essays

A most rebellious territory

essays

Peter Viereck: Psychoanalyst of Nazism

portraits

The fraught history of the presidential pardon

notebook

Pamela Harriman: an unsung hero of the Atlantic world

portraits

Decolonising Britain’s countryside

book-review

When Dickens made his masterpiece

essays

Baudelaire grappling with God

notebook

Resilient London will regenerate

notebook

The spirit of Hilary Mantel

notebook

Irina Ratushinskaya — Soviet dissident who fought the good fight

portraits

Was Horace a town or a country mouse?

notebook

The magic of Thomas Mann

notebook

Privacy Policy

page

The beginning of the end for the Cambridge Five

notebook

General James Oglethorpe — a man of uncommon vivacity

portraits

The shifting fortunes of IS-Khorasan

book-review

The City of God: on Augustine’s vision of Empire

essays

Business burble doesn’t beat real historical understanding

notebook

The Slow Horses are Britain’s perfect spies

essays

Was Richard Sorge the perfect spy?

portraits

The shadow of Chiang Kai-shek and the struggle for Taiwanese identity

notebook

Celebrating a century of the red telephone box

notebook

The anatomy of the spy novel

essays

Everything is not really okay in Afghanistan

book-review

God is back

essays

Why Jihadists write poetry

essays

Oswald Spengler – an intellectual life

portraits

Abba and engineering: how Swedish music took over the world

notebook

What if Bach and Handel had met?

notebook

The roots of cyber security lie in the City of London

notebook

Prisoner of Putin

notebook

How to make a nation

book-review

Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, the uncrowned King of Poland

portraits

Irish neutrality is unsustainable

notebook

The French Revolution and the making of the Counter-Enlightenment

essays

Blood on the Tracks turns 50

notebook

Will Trump’s Golden Age be a Gilded one?

notebook

The roots of America’s oil anxiety

notebook

Syria’s sectarian trap

notebook

Eisenhower’s vision of European security

notebook

How Nato can defend the Atlantic

notebook

First in their field — the men and women possessed by the spirit of adventure

book-review

EI Weekly Listen — Pascal Vennesson on the rise of transnational war-making

podcasts

Somaliland’s race for recognition

notebook

Making Poland great again

notebook

Basil Liddell Hart and the Art of Peace

portraits

Europe’s contested borders by BMW

notebook

Europe’s last Latin kingdom

essays

Sweden and Finland forced into the NATO fold by Russia

notebook

How ideology transformed the early modern individual

essays

The old man: the political genius who made Singapore

essays

Israel’s new Yom Kippur

essays

Explaining the Golden Era

notebook

The sublime hubris of Tropical Modernism

book-review

America’s European security dilemma is nothing new

essays

Lebanon’s ceasefires without end

notebook

Nazism’s downfall and the aftermath of war

essays

Machiavelli and the benefits of civil strife

essays

China rethinking its role

essays

Do we know the truth about the Thirty Years’ War?

essays

Jean Denis, Comte Lanjuinais – fearless opponent of The Terror

portraits

Painting the invisible

essays

World Cup has revealed the real Lionel Messi

notebook

Russia, America and the roads not taken

essays

EI Weekly Listen — Philip Bobbitt on the new global disorder

podcasts

India sends Modi a message

notebook

Operetta’s world of invention

book-review

The European Union’s coming ideological crisis

notebook

Ukraine in Kursk: a lesson in strategic audacity

notebook

Mozambique at the crossroads 

notebook

Bruce Springsteen’s Spanish love affair

essays

Artists of the floating world

essays

Fire in the sky — a history of meteoritics

essays

Made in Taiwan: How Developing Countries Can Leverage High Tech

essays

The many worlds of Peter Brown

essays

Venezuela’s Essequibo gamble

notebook

A deep history of Canadian populism

essays

In search of Denmark’s soul

essays

The perils of partition

notebook

The American dream making a come back

notebook

Algorithms vs Humanity

essays

Rudolf II: Habsburg hoarder, failed leader and Renaissance collector

portraits

The Vault of Heaven: Silvio Berlusconi’s final resting place

notebook

Eleanor of Provence, a force to be reckoned with

portraits

China’s AI Sputnik moment is not what it seems

notebook

On dandyism

essays

Jesse Ventura – the wrestling governor who blazed a trail for Trump

portraits

A Year in Ideas

essays

How a Second Cold War could have been averted

essays

Jules Verne’s paradoxes of progress

notebook

The world in 2024

essays

South Korea between the great powers

notebook

Gardens for all

book-review

Gustaf Mannerheim, leader of a free Finland

portraits

Tunisia turns away from democracy

notebook

On the dangers of sleep

notebook

On ostracism

notebook

EI Weekly Listen – Mark Honigsbaum: Challenging the ‘Great Reset’ theory of pandemics

podcasts

How it all went wrong for Stephen Tomlin

book-review

Daniel Defoe’s journeys of the mind

essays

A little history of Shin Bet

notebook

Securing Scandinavia

notebook

The medieval world’s Baltic connection

essays

Britain’s man inside Hitler’s inner circle

book-review

Philippa Fawcett – wrangler extraordinaire

portraits

Elizabeth the Dutiful

notebook

Inside Mossad

notebook

The transatlantic alliance is fractured, not broken

notebook

Krystyna Skarbek, Churchill’s favourite spy

portraits

Étienne Clavière – the revolutionary who hated revolution

portraits

Singing Byrd in a cage

notebook

The Teddy Boys’ two-fingered salute

book-review

Palau – 5 November’s other election

notebook

The helicopter, symbol of American hubris

essays

Victor Hugo’s ideal of Europe

essays

Russian history rhymes — from Soviet collapse to Putin’s folly

essays

The lost art of listening

notebook

An innovative analysis of global terrorism — Western Jihadism: A Thirty Year History by Jytte Klausen review

book-review

Element of surprise — the West needs to be more unpredictable

essays

Binding order and liberty: Tocqueville the politician

essays

Tsiang Tingfu – pre-revolutionary China’s last bridge with the West

portraits

Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan — for Xi, it’s personal

notebook

The moderate life of Decimus Magnus Ausonius

portraits

Upstairs, downstairs, demolished – the changing fate of the English country house

essays

Against pasta: remembering The Manifesto of Futurist Cooking

notebook

Disraeli and the Rothschilds provide a study in the power of political patronage

notebook

Larkin, prophet of postmodernism

book-review

When JS Bach came to Leipzig

notebook

Islam, India and the question of class

essays

Russian fortifications present an old problem for Ukraine

essays

Paolo Sarpi: opponent of papal power

portraits

On Jewish identity

notebook

The long fall of the Slavic nation

essays

Space architecture: a moonage daydream?

essays

How Beate Klarsfeld grappled with Europe’s demons

essays

Ukraine alone

notebook

Interest rates, mankind’s greatest invention

essays

Erdogan’s pious generation takes to the streets

notebook

The merits of a wartime mentality

notebook

The Gospel of Thomas: casting a new light on Early Christianity

essays

EI Weekly Listen — America’s problem with unconventional warfare by Frederick Kagan

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — How US policy failure post-9/11 undermined international order by Emma Sky

podcasts

The Rhinegold, Wagner’s other comedy 

notebook

Europe’s eastward march

essays

Putin’s Russia is a nuclear outlaw

essays

Putin’s Poison Pill

notebook

Putin’s propaganda is parroting Al-Qaeda’s anti-Western grievances

notebook

Rewriting Spanish history, one song at a time

essays

Jean Eustache: the outsider who reshaped French cinema

portraits

Argentina’s post-Peronist future

notebook

A Cold War with Chinese characteristics

essays

The deep history and dangers of just wars

essays

Inside Sudan’s forever war

essays

Germany stands by the rule of law in the Baltic

notebook

Yugoslavia and the ghosts of nationalism

notebook

Dürer in Venice

notebook

Olympe de Gouges: the recalcitrant revolutionary

portraits

God Bless America: A Short History of the Super Bowl Halftime Show

notebook

How the idea of America changed Britain

essays

Can nuclear deterrence preserve the Long Peace between major powers?

essays

Putin sees himself as engaged in an existential war with the West

notebook

Dance first, think afterwards

book-review

Why Zelenskyy fired Zaluzhnyi

notebook

The true sources of Soviet conduct

book-review

Sinwar’s death among the ruins

notebook

How Iran’s Tanker War shaped Trump’s worldview

notebook

The power of the Blue Marble

notebook

Paul Kennedy in conversation on the rise of a new era of great power competition

essays

Myths and realities of Putinism and NATO expansion

essays

New Turkey’s old politics

essays

Statecraft for an age of blood and iron — The Strategy of Denial: American Defence in an Age of Great Power Conflict by Elbridge Colby review

book-review

Ancient creations: from the Antikythera Mechanism to Western music

essays

Chiang Ching-kuo — dictator or democrat?

portraits

Hostile neighbours and a parallel path: why Japan and Germany are rearming

essays

Haiti and the pathos of history

essays

Charles III — why not make him King-Emperor of Europe?

notebook

Germany in Europe: the engine that couldn’t

essays

Russia’s quest for polar power

notebook

China-US rivalry risks dividing the EU

essays

Attlee’s shadow

book-review

Surrealism — a monstrous creation

book-review

The Germans and their cars: history of a love affair

essays

After Hilma af Klint: the influence of Theosophy on contemporary art

essays

Russia’s shadow war for Eastern Europe

notebook

The politics of China’s purges

notebook

Sylvia Beach, the bookseller who defied the Nazis

portraits

John Craxton’s art of living

book-review

De László’s portraits of society still matter

notebook

The strange death of Scotland’s political virtues

notebook

More than just a moment: the deep roots of American populism

notebook

Our attention dilemma is age-old

essays

The other plot to kill Hitler

book-review

How Russia and Iran have united in antipathy towards the West

essays

Khorloogiin Choibalsan — Stalin of the steppe

portraits

Janusz Korczak — the Old Doctor of Warsaw

portraits

Where has ‘the good life’ gone?

essays

Kids these days

notebook

Are we ready for the new humans?

book-review

Giovanni Bellini, the soul of Venice

book-review

Crusading women

book-review

The Nazis’ last victims

book-review

All hail King Zog?

book-review

The psychedelic renaissance

essays

Christianity’s carnal contradictions

book-review

The Trump effect

notebook

The Napoleonic myth of la méritocratie

notebook

The British have lost the art of eating out

notebook

Thomas Phelippes, the perfect Elizabethan spy

portraits

The art and science of intelligence in war

essays

After the Flood: Boulanger’s creation myth restored

book-review

The secrets of the special relationship

book-review

In defence of the city-state

essays

John le Carré: the timeless allure of a true literary great

notebook

Remembering Liu Xiaobo’s moral critique of modern China

notebook

Robert Louis Stevenson knew about guerrilla warfare

essays

Frank Kitson and the myth of the counter-insurgent

essays

Spies, lies and empires

book-review

China and America, the great decoupling

notebook

Europe’s lost peasant utopias

book-review

Alexander Helphand — impresario of revolutionary disaster who smoothed Lenin’s return to Russia

portraits

Uruk and the origins of the sacred economy

essays

America’s Afghan reckoning

notebook

Parallel visionaries – Hilla Rebay and Hilma af Klint

essays

A ship without a captain — Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok review

book-review

Ukraine is the latest disaster in a long history of Russian military dysfunction

notebook

Inventing the Samurai

essays

The aesthetic harmony of Japanese nature

essays

Why do politicians get energy policy wrong?

essays

On tea

notebook

Plautus punching up: a different class of comedy

essays

How War Made Odessa More Ukrainian

essays

Epitaph on a mafioso’s grave

notebook

The ins and outs of the European project

book-review

Yet another flight across the Durand Line

notebook

When everything is empire

book-review

How the Nazis weaponised Charlemagne

essays

The wages of Putin’s war

notebook

Going with the grain: the rise and fall of the Roman market

essays

How advertising consumed the counter-culture

essays

The Statue of Liberty’s Egyptian origins

notebook

The Knights Templars and the pursuit of Christendom

essays

The perils of Russian stability under Putin

notebook

In conversation with Fiona Hill on Donald Trump’s nuclear nightmares

essays

Crisis, settlement, or containment — what is to be done on Russia?

essays

The case for a geopolitics of tragedy

book-review

Macron stands apart from the United States – and Europe

notebook

Caravaggio’s last stand

book-review

The death of Tsarist Russia and the creation of modern Ukraine

notebook

The UN has failed Lebanon

notebook

The Kaiser and the Nazis

book-review

Marine Le Pen’s reckoning

notebook

What should we do when the terrorists go quiet?

essays

Geopolitics and the Mongol Empire

essays

The first Yugoslav

notebook

Show’s over: the case against a cultural boycott of Russia

notebook

The century of the gene

essays

Why bittersweet beats SOUR

notebook

Good poetry in a crisis

notebook

Survival lessons from Ancient Rome

essays

The birth of theosophy

essays

Heinrich Biber — composer of rapture and ravings

portraits

Roger Federer rose above our frenetic times

notebook

French and British cinema in wartime: subtlety against the odds

notebook

The liberation of France made the modern world

essays

John Hersey’s lasting testament

book-review

Fearing Russia’s futures

essays

How China made it

book-review

Mullā Ṣadrā, Islam’s greatest modern philosopher

portraits

Italy’s dubbing delusions

notebook

Tehran’s endgame

notebook

The triumph and tragedy of Yukio Mishima

essays

Must Europe always take every opportunity to miss an opportunity?

essays

John Law, the man who blew up the French economy

essays

William Shockley — accidental inventor of Silicon Valley

portraits

Unipolar America: another imperial delusion ends

essays

What the Silicon Valley idealists got wrong

essays

The Joint Intelligence Committee: Reading the Russian mindset

essays

Time running out in China’s waiting game — The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi review

book-review

Rosaleen Norton — joyful contrarian and occultist turned pioneer for free speech

portraits

War displaces Ukrainians – again

notebook

Valeriy Lobanovskyi: The greatest football coach you’ve never heard of

portraits

A world without glamorous Shanghai is the poorer for it

notebook

The joy of suffering

essays

Defeat in Ukraine dooms Putin’s distorted historical worldview

notebook

Simon Leys — the cosmopolitan scholar who broke the rules of Sinology

portraits

Cyprian Ekwensi: Lagos life in the raw

portraits

Mustang: the heart of Nepal’s China dream

notebook

Airports have changed – for the worse

notebook

Russia’s unbearable frontline burden

notebook

The terrible dilemmas of leadership in a thermonuclear world

essays

America cannot ignore the Middle East

notebook

What the Romans did for the US

essays

Books of the Year 2023

book-review

J.G.A. Pocock’s roads not taken

notebook

The magic of Merchant Ivory

notebook

Six Tudor lives in their own right

book-review

The agony and the ecstasy of Andy Murray

notebook

Unpicking imperial history

book-review

Heavenly ambitions and earthly ruin: the lessons of the Taiping Rebellion

essays

The Syrian war never really ended

notebook

The era of Taylor Swift

essays

Ghosts of the old Middle East

essays

Sweden’s Zeitenwende

notebook

Iranian cinema against the Islamic Republic

book-review

Reading the map of love

notebook

Russia digging in for a long war with the West

notebook

Four steps to surviving the Russia crisis

essays

The eighteenth-century technological awakening of artist adventurers

essays

Remembering Wilhelm Furtwängler

notebook

Sweden’s swinging sixties

essays

In defence of shareholder democracy

essays

When the Samurai came to America

notebook

In Praise of The Fast Show

notebook

The double agent who introduced Japan to the West

essays

The squandered promise of Willie Wilde

portraits

Fanfare for Ukraine

notebook

Gerald of Wales, chronicler of the Celtic world

portraits

The last chance for Sudan

notebook

Reform and the long shadow of the Fourth Party

notebook

The tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV

essays

Giovannino Guareschi: Italian Orwell

portraits

Joe Biden and the attractions of Augustine

notebook

Crisis and the creation of great art

essays

Raïssa Maritain: more than a mystic

portraits

Learning from Asian philosophies of rebirth

essays

The truth shall set us free

essays

Chequered history of ministries of all the talents

notebook

Benedict XVI: God’s Rottweiler, the Pope who retired

notebook

The Vedic Canon

notebook

The fight to save the trees of Paris

notebook

The creative industrial complex

book-review

1524: The year beer came to England

notebook

The life and deaths of Joseph Conrad

notebook

Versailles’ splendour unbounded

book-review

The 18th century way of war

notebook

What the Taliban did next

book-review

Mrs Dalloway’s war wounds

notebook

What is England really made of?

book-review

EI Talks… a new world of intelligence

podcasts

Testament to doomed media

essays

How Tolstoy immortalised Russia’s Caucasus forever war

essays

A glimpse of Edwardian splendour

book-review

Aspasia of Miletus – queen of the Athenian salon

portraits

Joseph Leclerc du Tremblay – the original éminence grise

portraits

Spartacus, history’s nowhere man

essays

The special role that never was

essays

Marion Dönhoff: the very best of Germany

notebook

The enduring secret to Cyrus the Great’s success

essays

The dark spectacle of American political violence

notebook

New towns, old problems

notebook

‘Slippery Sam’ — Britain’s man in Madrid

portraits

Illuminated by Sidney Lumet, beyond reasonable doubt

notebook

The war against printing

essays

Klára Dán — esoteric intellect who wrote the first modern computer code

portraits

‘Everything is Ukraine’ — Ukraine’s long search for a homeland

essays

Joseph Galloway – the forgotten Founding Father

portraits

The Middle East: Kissinger’s masterpiece?

book-review

Olympism: magic, myths and mega-events

notebook

The Gospel according to Judas

book-review

Great Books: I Viceré by Federico De Roberto

book-review

Sanctions as potent yet unwieldy weapons of war

book-review

The year the West woke up

essays

The Kremlin has its eyes on Gagauzia

notebook

A Roman Feast

book-review

Laughing with the Face of God

notebook

Pensions in a time of kings

notebook

The true genius of automata

essays

Quintus Fabius Cunctator: a general who stands askew in the pantheon of Roman heroes

portraits

Edwin Walker: deep-state conspirator

book-review

Canada’s Pacific railway: an iron spine for a paper nation

book-review

Commemorating Portugal’s ambiguous revolution

notebook

Interwar architecture was much more than modernism

book-review

The magnificent unreality of Barbara Comyns

book-review

Messiaen’s many mutations

book-review

How women made Benjamin Disraeli

notebook

The Olympic moment

notebook

Why do we get the wrong leaders?

essays

Learning the lessons of the 1982 Lebanon War

notebook

The Great French Songbook

essays

The tragic decline of Christian rituals

notebook

India’s new iconoclasts

essays

Martin Luther’s wise protector

notebook

The intoxicating humanism of Truffaut’s Les 400 Coups

notebook

Fantasy in Middle Eastern nation-making

essays

The miracle of refugee musicians

notebook

The Eurasian Century, Part I: What Mackinder Knew

essays

The Eurasian Century, Part V: Beijing’s Gambit

essays

Elizabeth Thompson — military artist whose star rose and fell with the British Empire

portraits

EI Weekly Listen — What did it mean to belong to the Holy Roman Empire?

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — Geopolitics never went away for the United States

podcasts

Worldview — The future of the museum

podcasts

Worldview — The Return of Applied History

podcasts

Czechoslovakia at the centre of history

book-review

EI Talks… Machiavelli

podcasts

A musical masterpiece

book-review

EI Talks… Israel’s harrowing week and the consequences for the Middle East

podcasts

Can Erdogan keep up his Middle East balancing act?

notebook

EI Talks… Tecumseh and the Shawnee Confederacy

podcasts

Flights of fantasy

book-review

EI Weekly Listen — Yu Jie on the deep historical roots of China’s global ambition

podcasts

How LBJ forged the US-Israel alliance

notebook

How numbers came to Europe

notebook

EI Weekly Listen — David Frum on how empire-states are changing the game

podcasts

EI Talks… Caravaggio

podcasts

Learning the right lessons from Ukraine’s naval war

notebook

The Holy Alliance was doomed to be brittle

book-review

EI Portraits — Rana Mitter on Tsiang Tingfu, pre-revolutionary China’s last bridge with the West

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — Kentaro Fujimoto on Japan’s global future

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — Kristin Ven Bruusgaard on the paradox of nuclear strategy

podcasts

EI Talks… why Europe needs a grand strategy with Marina E. Henke

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — Andreas Rödder on Konrad Adenauer and the German realignment

podcasts

The pitfalls of hindsight

notebook

What Zelensky can learn from Syngman Rhee

notebook

The making of Trump’s worldview

podcasts

China vs the WTO: The Inside Story

podcasts

The West’s lust for liberty

podcasts

Learning in Italy

notebook

Macron’s France is remaking itself again

notebook

The nuclear dilemma: deterrence works, up to a point

essays

History shows revolutions are a disaster

essays

Empire and development in First Millennium Europe

essays

HIMARS permit Ukrainians to fight how they know best — a strategy of corrosion

notebook

A garden of schizophrenics

essays

Blessed are the cheesemakers

notebook

Putin bets the Russia house on the Donbas rustbelt

essays

The two Elizabeths

notebook

The Eurasian Century, Part III: The Totalitarian Challenge

essays

How the West can drive a wedge between India and Russia

essays

John Hughes and the making and unmaking of the American dream

essays

Putin’s land war — cautionary lessons from Ancient Greece

notebook

Low power: how self-sufficient Sweden jeopardised its energy security

notebook

Meteorites: our fascination with the ultimate antique

essays

How Elizabeth II created the role of the modern monarch

notebook

A brief history of the fatwa

notebook

Worldview — what is the future of the West?

podcasts

How the individual invented the modern West

essays

EI Weekly Listen — Towards a Westphalia for the Middle East by Brendan Simms

podcasts

Can Epic Poetry Revive History?

essays

Beware the Ides of August

essays

The rise and fall of the Creek Confederacy

book-review

An endless dialogue between past and present

essays

A paean to Shane MacGowan

notebook

Conservatism and the sceptical enlightenment

notebook

Russia: Nation of floods

notebook

A Hollywood treasure trove

book-review

Venezuela faces the music

notebook

The worlds of the Japanese woodblock

book-review

Censorship in the cradle of democracy

notebook

Kate Bush, English lionheart

notebook

Russia’s North Korean connection

notebook

America’s historical overload

book-review

Greenland: Denmark’s post-colonial dilemma

notebook

The status quo powers strike back

notebook

What happened to the politician’s moustache?

essays

England’s unusual individualism

notebook

A tale of two Congos

notebook

Trump the caudillo

notebook

Southeast Asia – between Trump and China

notebook

How the Vatican does geopolitics

notebook

The rise of the gerontocrats

notebook

Italy the mediator’s crush on Russia

notebook

The future of war: embrace the new, remember the old

book-review

Human behaviour will still determine who wins wars

notebook

The dark side to loving a group

essays

The geopolitical fight to come over green energy

essays

Imperial Germany – mighty aristocracy or modern meritocracy?

notebook

John McDonald – poker-playing popularizer of game theory

portraits

Brick is best

notebook

In Defence of the Literary Critic

book-review

György Kurtág contemplates his endgame

book-review

Lucretius’ life-saving poem

essays

How history’s quest for truth became a call to action

essays

2023: The revenge of history

essays

Roald Dahl’s readable but regrettable Uncle Oswald

notebook

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and the humanity of history

notebook

The lost worlds of Raphael Samuel

book-review

Cinematic journeys in old-time Finland

notebook

The founding father of a future Russia

notebook

Orkney: ‘the most dangerous place of all Christendom’

book-review

An early modern guide to information overload

essays

War and the Proms

book-review

Archives among the ashes

book-review

How the Print Revolution created a market of ideas

essays

The West’s year of living anxiously

essays

Bob Dylan, the last of the best

book-review

The use and abuse of the Cuban Missile Crisis

essays

Turner’s genius for technology

notebook

On squalor

essays

Gatsby, still great at 100

notebook

How monks shaped Christendom

book-review

Why we make lists

notebook

Champagne supernova

notebook

For the love of wine

essays

Tender is the night

notebook

Philip Thicknesse — libertine turned ornamental hermit

portraits

The beauty of municipal swimming pools

notebook

On Richelieu’s cats

notebook

Inauguration and the power of American ritual

notebook

Painting by numbers

notebook

A little history of the Fierce Goddess

notebook

The ancient Egyptians and birds — history of a fascination

notebook

Nouvelle Cuisine made food better

notebook

Napoleon’s trouble on the home front

notebook

How the GDR fell in love with the West

essays

On the Road with Alexis de Tocqueville

book-review

A New Breed of Hobby Horse

notebook

Folke Hero

notebook

Grey zones and dark tourism in Europe’s hinterlands

essays

The making of Xi Jinping, China’s absolute monarch

notebook

The looming battle for succession in Iran

essays

At the crossroads of religion and science

book-review

Why children eat books up

book-review

Wild stories of medieval women

book-review

The decline and fall of period drama

notebook

The Great Siege of Malta through Ottoman eyes

book-review

The spiritual world of The White Lotus

essays

Wandering through the Carpathian Mountains

book-review

The maverick genius of Georges Bizet

notebook

England’s mystical inheritance

notebook

The invention of suburbia

essays

What Mary Shelley did in the shadows

book-review

Cookie Policy

page

Late Beauties of the British Empire

essays

MI9 – Helen Fry on wartime escape

podcasts

ChatGPT: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

notebook

The fight for the heart of Istanbul

notebook

The Wars of the Roses and the problem with private armies

notebook

The ‘secretaries’ of MI6

notebook

We are legion

book-review

How not to fight a war in Russia

book-review

The price of fairness

book-review

René of Anjou — an Arthurian king

portraits

Stuck in Herbert’s Temple

notebook

‘The Day Of The Jackal’: How far was fiction from reality?

notebook

The right path — the complexities of transporting lethal aid to Ukraine

notebook

The passion of Bach

notebook

The true history of the Wagner Group

book-review

Why dictators fall

notebook

Blinded by the light

notebook

The cloak-and-dagger intrigue of Italian presidential elections

notebook

Why Jihadis are drawn to Khorasan

notebook

Akinpelu Obisesan — a gentleman diarist in colonial Africa

portraits

Digital dictatorship: a brutal examination of the UAE

book-review

The world that Vasco da Gama built

essays

The strong armed philosophy of the Chinese state isn’t new

essays

Brendan Bracken – ‘more Churchillian than Churchill’

portraits

Cubans are losing their fear

notebook

You are not as clever as you think

essays

Technology transfer across the ages

essays

Ukraine and Russia: how closeness turned into war

essays

George Orwell’s idea of technology

notebook

When artists retrain

notebook

Fighting back against Russia — the return of propaganda

notebook

Spoken history: the modern importance of indigenous cultures

essays

Inside Cromwell’s New Model Army

book-review

Between Hitler and Mussolini: The agony of Pope Pius XII

book-review

Anti-nuclear bomb Germany changing its mind

notebook

Germany’s 1960s slide into political violence is a warning

notebook

Great Books: William Golding’s The Spire

book-review

The new Warsaw Pact

essays

How Classics captured the Chinese imagination

book-review

In defence of architecture

book-review

The Return of Russia’s Soviet Past

notebook

In pursuit of greatness: from Troy to Westminster

essays

Italy’s strangely seductive culture of mediocrity

notebook

Crossing America’s big country

notebook

OpenAI’s dual personality disorder

notebook

The paradoxes of Ireland’s imperial past

notebook

Martin Niemöller’s stand against Hitler

notebook

Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell – visions of a vanished Britain

essays

For the common good

notebook

A too democratic university

notebook

When Edo became Tokyo

essays

Music in Auschwitz

book-review

Charles Lamb’s literary alter ego

notebook

The revolt of Germany’s working class

notebook

Cecil Beaton’s gardens of Eden

book-review

Thomas Mann’s cathedrals in prose

notebook

Whit Stillman’s comedies of manners

notebook

The secret life of hemp

notebook

Italy: Mother of all invention

notebook

Putin needs ‘General Frost’ on his side to win in Ukraine

notebook

Why the idea of Carthage survived Roman conquest

essays

Swedish leaders and a lesson in hubris

notebook

Duality, determinism and demography: The Greeks on geopolitics

essays

Shaping society — The Making of Our Urban Landscape by Geoffrey Tyack review

book-review

Great Books: The Golden String by Bede Griffiths

book-review

Nothing like a midsummer sacrifice

notebook

Nepal’s shifting loyalties — All Roads Lead North: China, Nepal and the Conquest for the Himalayas by Amish Raj Mulmi review

book-review

An unlikely artistic alliance: the wartime Britons who saved and celebrated German art

essays

Kazakhstan’s Russia problem

notebook

Fratelli d’Italia’s Burning Flame — why the medium is the message for Giorgia Meloni

notebook

EI Weekly Listen — Geopolitics, geoeconomics and Russian revisionism by Mikael Wigell

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — Elements of seapower, past and present by Lincoln Paine

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — Russia and geopolitics by Anna-Lena Laurén

podcasts

Worldview — the Eurasian century

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — Alexander Lee on Machiavelli and civil strife

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen – Tim Marshall: New Turkey’s old politics

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen — Clive Aslet: The changing fate of the English country house

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen – Philip Bobbitt: A government of laws

podcasts

The Eurasian Century, by Hal Brands

page

Meritocracy Week

page

The infinite delight of Italo Calvino

book-review

What is the British Army for?

notebook

Succession: the end of the line

notebook

Championing Opera’s Next Generation

book-review

Cannes: festival of freedom

notebook

The mighty Dnieper’s war stories

notebook

Karabakh is no more

notebook

Stopping the Exodus: an impossible task

notebook

How Bernstein loved the impossible

book-review

How Sweden’s NATO bid became a geopolitical bargaining chip

notebook

Spinoza’s radical enlightenment

book-review

Janáček’s small-town world

book-review

‘We were there with the history makers, really finding out what they thought and felt’ – in conversation with Norma Percy

essays

Keith Murdoch, the patriarch

portraits

Victor Erice’s lost time

book-review

The madness of crowds

notebook

Did Tiberius have a grand strategy?

notebook

To top it with the best of them

book-review

The dark beauty of Alain Delon

notebook

Izabela Czartoryska, Polish princess and patriot

book-review

The illusory search for a lost civilisation

notebook

John Lavery’s lasting impressions

book-review

Alex Salmond, the nearly man who almost broke up Britain

notebook

The curious history of imaginary libraries

notebook

A monarch’s message of unity

notebook

The language of flowers

book-review

The Edwardian assault on free trade

notebook

A little history of privacy

book-review

How to save imperial history

book-review

Start

page

The Ettrick Shepherd stands watch

notebook

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky – Rocket Man

portraits

The Indo-Pacific is an idea whose time has come

notebook

A contested Afghanistan could be even worse

notebook

Weimar on the West Coast

notebook

The beauty of brocade paper

notebook

George IV: a very decadent Prince

essays

George Kennedy Young: Banker, Writer, Soldier, Spy

portraits

China’s neverending pigstory

notebook

Anna Komnene – the princess who chronicled Byzantium’s changing fortunes

portraits

The polymath in the age of specialisation

essays

Nafissa Sid Cara — an ambiguous pioneer for Muslim women

portraits

The great beauty of Donatello

essays

The strange death of the art school

notebook

Who are the modern Greeks?

notebook

Solitude standing

notebook

Genius has its limits

notebook

Milton vs the echo chamber

notebook

Angels among us

notebook

Order and chaos in ancient Indian thought

essays

Will Russia be happy as China’s junior partner?

notebook

Helen Sutherland – brave cultivator of the beautiful

portraits

Bartolus of Saxoferrato — a legal legend between two ages

portraits

The ancient art of sycophancy

notebook

Carl Akeley – the contradictory life of a taxidermist and hunter turned wildlife photographer

portraits

Nature through the eyes of two Victorians: a birdwatcher and his big-game hunting brother

essays

Finding the God in Godard

notebook

Hip to be Square

book-review

Great Books: the Winnetou series by Karl May

book-review

Belarus: the state built by the Second World War

notebook

What are leaders good for?

essays

In defence of freedom in fiction

essays

Seeing through Mussolini’s lies

book-review

Christmas warmth illuminates dark times

essays

Napoleon: the revolutionary who made himself an emperor

book-review

Bengal Opium: a study in continuity

essays

The metamorphosis of Volodymyr Zelensky

notebook

Is farming the root of civilisation?

essays

Antonio Greppi — architect of enlightened absolutism

portraits

What Waco Means Now

notebook

William Gerhardie’s Russian Problem

notebook

NATO’s Baltic Dilemma

notebook

A Little History of Modern Russia

notebook

Religion v Science: Crossing the Great Divide

book-review

The Spying Game Will Find a Use for AI

notebook

The German key to European liberty

essays

In search of Ararat

notebook

Venetian visions of China’s future

book-review

The multiple mysteries of Italian wine

notebook

Taking sport too seriously

notebook

The inexhaustible genius of classical music

notebook

Super superconductors? Don’t believe the hype

notebook

Democracy is no longer a ‘hurray-word’ in West Africa

notebook

The limits of the Roman Empire

book-review

Hegel’s philosophy of history

book-review

The limits of dictatorship

notebook

Polycrisis? What polycrisis?

notebook

Giacomo Puccini: untormented genius

notebook

‘We are in the most sustained period of high crisis since 1962’ — in conversation with Philip Zelikow

notebook

Auden’s Austrian summer

book-review

Did slavery cause the British Industrial Revolution?

book-review

Fake Shakespeare

notebook

7 October has not changed the Middle East

notebook

Inside Mozambique’s war on terror

book-review

The unmaking of Julius Caesar

book-review

The Pythagoras myth

notebook

Iran and Pakistan’s shared crisis in Baluchistan

notebook

Stravinsky’s forever modern masterpiece

book-review

Friedman fighter

book-review

All hail the mandarin collar

notebook

The many meanings of the age of upheaval

essays

Sweden’s long and winding road to NATO

notebook

Russia’s long imperial moment

notebook

The salvation of Spinoza

essays

China and Russia: forever brothers?

essays

Henry Stubbe, early modern champion of ‘Mahometan Christianity’

portraits

How East Germany lost the battle for technology

essays

The rise of the great power carve up

essays

Iran’s sudden power vacuum

notebook

NATO’s next act

book-review

Charles Dickens’ creature comforts

book-review

Japan’s genius for crafts

book-review

The spires at the heart of French history

notebook

Putin’s Napoleon complex

notebook

The medieval roots of modern antisemitism

book-review

The Islamist rivalry reshaping Turkish politics

notebook

The struggle for Saudi Arabia’s buried past

essays

Mint condition

book-review

How censorship conquered the world, again

essays

Resurrecting Mahler

book-review

Everything short of war: Hizbollah’s strategy lies in ruins

notebook

The unforgettable Michael Gambon

notebook

Arnold Schönberg and the artist’s right to be awkward

notebook

Music like you’ve never heard it before

book-review

How the US origin myth triumphed over history

essays

Liberté and Laïcité

notebook

Trump and Iran face off across a new Middle East

notebook

Liberalism’s lost saint

book-review

Ghospelling and ghossiping

book-review

The 1840 Oriental Crisis, a triumph of diplomacy

notebook

Russia’s long war with the maritime powers

essays

The spectacular disasters of Augustus the Strong

book-review

The hunchback of Mosul

notebook

Music at the end of time

book-review

Israel’s elusive peace

notebook

The making of Oscar Wilde

book-review

Securonomics belongs to the world of yesterday

notebook

The wages of a nuclear war

book-review

Virginia Cowles, a woman in search of trouble

portraits

The ballad of John and Paul

book-review

How the Young Turks became tyrants

notebook

Trump’s tariff paradox

notebook

The political power of knowing your enemy

notebook

Trump’s Syrian deal like no other

notebook

Poetry for the common reader

book-review

Crowded out

notebook

That was once upon a time in Iraq

notebook

Great Books: E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops

book-review

The perils of the quest for immortality

notebook

Sophie Scholl — still the White Rose blooms

notebook

Her Great Quality

notebook

Jaan Kross — a writer’s route to happiness

portraits

More than the sum of our parts

notebook

Did America lose the right stuff?

notebook

Infernal allies

essays

The tragedy of the Trump circus

notebook

Element of the absurd — In Search of Romania by Dennis Deletant review

book-review

Worldview — Leadership in war

podcasts

What was it like being Rome’s richest man?

book-review

Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto-gold turned to dust

notebook

Great Books: Colette’s The Pure and the Impure

book-review

How early EVs were overtaken by macho petrol heads

notebook

Great Books: Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk

book-review

The Gospel according to King Charles

notebook

Victor Frankenstein’s bad habits

notebook

The deep historical roots of Russia’s scorched earth policy

essays

Machiavelli’s take on mercenaries

notebook

Sex and death in mid-nineteenth century America

book-review

What Richard Wagner can tell us about the Wagner Group

notebook

John Paul II understood geopolitics

notebook

A Chinese history to start a fire

book-review

The haunting presence of Stanley Kubrick

notebook

The British Empire’s Indian odyssey

essays

Hollywood’s most gifted scribe

notebook

On Hilary Mantel and not meeting famous authors

notebook

How to reform the House of Lords without really trying

notebook

Why on earth do actors become novelists?

notebook

Diplomacy, betrayal and the road to Vietnam

book-review

On the frontline in Lebanon

notebook

The Mughals, opulence unparalleled

book-review

The perils of predicting the future

notebook

Donald Trump’s cryptopia

notebook

The heroes of Notre-Dame’s resurrection

notebook

Rahab, the Old Testament’s female super spy

portraits

A great power carve up

notebook

Mining for meaning

book-review

The quest for the age of the earth

essays

What the West can learn from Cold War dissidents

notebook

The Second World War had its poets too

book-review

Why utopias still matter

notebook

Finding the future in France Profonde

notebook

Donnez moi un break

notebook

The quest for Vino and Veritas

notebook

Casting a vote for democracy

notebook

Bad history — why the Treaty of Versailles is an imperfect guide to future Russia-West relations

notebook

Working From Anywhere — the holiday never stops

notebook

In search of civilisation

essays

The ancient roots of the modern holy war

essays

Italia 1990s: footballing glory turned to dust

notebook

It came from outer space

essays

Guittone d’Arezzo – Dante’s forgotten muse

portraits

Knowing Russia was going to invade Ukraine was not enough

notebook

Why 16 billion cortical neurons are not enough

essays

Epicharis — defiance unbounded

portraits

Football’s most perfect meritocracy

notebook

Russia and the West – the path not taken

essays

The different ways to know the gods in Ancient Greece

essays

Does evolution have a moral or spiritual dimension?

essays

Roman geopolitics — an exercise in myth-making

essays

The transformation of Mitteleuropa

essays

Grey matters

notebook

The lost allure of alchemy

notebook

On the art of metallurgy

notebook

Policy shaped by personal conviction — False Prophets: British leaders’ fateful fascination with the Middle East from Suez to Syria by Nigel Ashton review

book-review

The joy of books

book-review

Priaulx Rainier: Fearless and pioneering composer

portraits

The shadow of 1912: history points to a GOP split

notebook

Missing the boat in a broad canvas — Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern by Mary Beard review

book-review

Ancient scandals and power struggles: Succession’s unexpected playfulness with ancient history

notebook

Suffering — the price of being alive: an Islamic perspective

essays

Dispatched to Donbas to honour frontline heroes

notebook

A collision of rival visions — Empire and Jihad: The Anglo-Arab Wars of 1870-1920 by Neil Faulkner review

book-review

Where Cambridge leads Britain should follow

notebook

The promise of Greenland

notebook

Waugh’s war

notebook

Maria Antonia of Bavaria — Electress of many talents

portraits

On betrayal

essays

Pittacus – the good tyrant

portraits

The merrie histories of R.J. Unstead

notebook

Fighting the good fight

notebook

Edward Daniel Clarke – collector of the world

portraits

The ghost of Olof Palme: how support for the Kurds is complicating Sweden’s NATO accession

notebook

Moina Mathers — High Priestess of the Belle Époque

portraits

How to speak when speech isn’t free

notebook

Apology for a woman writing

notebook

This woman’s work

notebook

Dunwich’s very English apocalypse

notebook

The original women in STEM

notebook

Mimi Baez Fariña – life beyond the 60s

portraits

The many meanings of Georgia O’Keeffe

notebook

EI Weekly Listen — Fairy Tales of Statehood: the politics of sacred land and divine-kings by Jessica Frazier

podcasts

Hans Rott — a symphonic stepping stone

portraits

Essaying a genre

notebook

The Eurasian Century, Part II: The Great Black Tornado

essays

Star Wars — the mythos of our times

notebook

Nijinsky’s last dance

notebook

Great Books: Charles Dickens’ Hard Times

book-review

Is energy the god of progress?

notebook

Putin’s war with the Church

notebook

Jacobus Clemens non Papa – absolutely not the Pope

portraits

More than a bandstand

notebook

Fear and loathing in East Anglia

notebook

The possibility of elsewhere

notebook

Missing the theatre of everyday life

notebook

In praise of Rembrandt’s ruffs

notebook

The rise of the metaverse

notebook

Football’s rhetoric of suffering

notebook

The 1920 Battle for Ukraine — a warning from the past

notebook

A hook to uncover hidden histories — My Grandfather’s Knife: And Other Stories of War and Belongings by Joseph Pearson review

book-review

Frederic Prokosch — freedom in fiction

portraits

China’s ruling creed at 100: the Party never stops

essays

The silence of Chinese intellectuals under Xi Jinping

notebook

Women in modern China — the odds are heaped against Peng Shuai

notebook

Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy – true to her own self

essays

Gareth Evans — philosophy’s lost prodigy

portraits

A marriage of the geopolitical, the military and the material — Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II by Paul Kennedy review

book-review

In praise of music’s uselessness

notebook

Patrick Hamilton’s reversals of fortune

book-review

Bohumil Hrabal — king of palaverers

portraits

Kerouac Abroad, Kerouac at Sea and Kerouac Out There

notebook

Mikhail Gorbachev gave Russia a chance

essays

Madame de Pompadour — eighteenth-century fashion and twenty-first-century fads

book-review

The Pacific Century is here — but not as advertised

notebook

Stalin, Mao and turbulent transitions in authoritarian regimes

book-review

How the information age really began

essays

Gorbachev did not end the Cold War alone — the West won

notebook

Have Britons lost the art of talking proper?

notebook

Great Books: The Sorrows of Satan by Marie Corelli

book-review

Democratised and declassified: the era of social media war is here

notebook

Superforecasting will not save us

essays

A very medieval cost of living crisis

notebook

The imbalance of terror: reflections on nuclear deterrence from the 1980s

notebook

When the fighting stops, what then?

notebook

Winston Churchill, arch-pragmatist

essays

Sharing Everest a tall order

notebook

Hiring – new opportunities at Engelsberg Ideas

notebook

Where does Cuba’s destiny lie?

book-review

Kon Satoshi — animator of unmatched talent

portraits

Who created The Paintings for the Temple?

essays

Capitalism’s Dutch dynamic

book-review

José Saramago was the master of reinvention

notebook

Great Books: Virginia Woolf’s Flush: A Biography

book-review

NATO is back

notebook

Pulling at the threads of astrology

notebook

Great Books: Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie

book-review

Liberty and the myth of Venice

essays

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca – conquistador brawler turned defender of Indigenous American Rights

portraits

US aiding Ukraine won’t deter China

essays

Great Books: Alistair Horne’s The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916

book-review

The West’s Lust for Liberty

essays

Spring’s Norman Roots

notebook

Sparta’s Self-inflicted Wound

notebook

Estonia’s Musical Miracles

notebook

Liberty in the Shadow of Bonaparte

essays

Highs and lows

book-review

Noel Coward’s too brief encounter with the silver screen

notebook

The many paradoxes of Bernard Mandeville

book-review

Marching on Rome

notebook

The Ancients loved dogs too

notebook

In search of William Byrd’s lighter side

notebook

Milan Kundera dreamt in Czech

notebook

Ukraine’s long game

notebook

You can call me Al

notebook

Strawberry buns at The End of the World Café: thoughts on the Polish-Russian border

notebook

Beyond Berlin

notebook

The invention of the average

book-review

The first prime minister

notebook

Ransacking Naples

book-review

The many worlds of Margaret Cavendish

book-review

Finding Turkey in Narnia

essays

An earthy, austere Ring

book-review

The boundless creativity of Wayne Shorter

book-review

A day to remember

book-review

The sorrow and pity of war

notebook

Gaza’s troubles began long ago

notebook

Hamas’ genocidal massacre on October 7 has deep historical roots

notebook

Israel’s Fauda fallacy

notebook

Iranians know who their enemy is, and it’s not Israel

notebook

Celebrating Ligeti’s soundspace odyssey

book-review

Celebrating Anpanman at fifty

notebook

The many meanings of Jihad

notebook

The Messianic roots of the modern settler movement

notebook

Powell and Pressburger worked miracles

book-review

Ferdinand’s second life was the sweetest

notebook

Is Falstaff too large a character to bring to life?

notebook

The broken lawnmower: Noël Coward’s greatest line?

notebook

Krampus lives

notebook

Fay Schopen, 1975-2023

notebook

Gaza and the long tail of terror

notebook

Medieval wanderlust

book-review

The dialects of Joseph Wright

portraits

Going it alone

notebook

Navalny’s end

notebook

The most dangerous of short stories

notebook

Nixon’s dance with the chairman

notebook

Worldview — Ukraine, two years on

podcasts

Sargent’s brush with fashion

book-review

Curt Bloch’s underwater resistance

book-review

Russia and the West: a dialogue of the deaf

notebook

Kind of Blue’s quiet mystery

book-review

An Easter elegy

notebook

The forgotten art of memory

notebook

A wild Winterreise

book-review

A dynasty of human frailty

book-review

Michael Tanner, the complete critic

notebook

Rethinking Impressionism

book-review

Isabella Whitney, England’s first female professional writer

portraits

The secret to Byzantium’s success

book-review

The bells, the bells

notebook

The Warsaw Pact’s forgotten legacy

notebook

Venice, the serenely unclassifiable city

book-review

James Salter, last of the Americans

book-review

James Ensor, the man behind the masks

notebook

Nietzsche’s Italian connection

book-review

Eric Rohmer’s timeless antidotes

notebook

Queen Isabella, the ‘she-wolf of France’

portraits

Abraham Lincoln’s warning against mob rule

notebook

Russia returns to Svalbard

notebook

Poetry, prose and the battle for Paradise Lost

essays

Two assassinations and a region on the brink

notebook

Hydro-imperialism

book-review

The hidden fractures beneath America’s Cold War triumph

book-review

The muddles and mysteries of A Passage to India

notebook

Americana noir

essays

How Arthur Ashe rewrote the script

notebook

What makes a good opening line?

notebook

The invention of music

book-review

A little history of the anchovy

book-review

Ancient India’s global reach

book-review

Old tech makes new problems for Hizbollah

notebook

Glasgow’s theatre of enchantment and heartbreak

book-review

The revelation of Joachim du Bellay

notebook

Why human creativity matters in the age of AI

essays

Dr Strangelove’s comedy of nightmares

essays

The many makings of Donald Trump

book-review

Xi and his presidents

notebook

Five obstacles to Trump’s peace plan

notebook

Nasser’s children

book-review

The magic of Tirzah Garwood

book-review

An echo of South Korea’s past

notebook

The rift that doomed the Confederacy

essays

Uplifting India

book-review

The long struggle for Syria

notebook

The pardon paradox

notebook

Russia’s Cold War Redux strategy for the Middle East lies in ruins

notebook

A deep history of games

book-review

Literacy’s declining empire

notebook

Podcasts v the written word

notebook

Maria Callas made her own myths

book-review

The lost art of chorography

essays

Trump in the shadow of Reagan

notebook

Why Indonesia joined the BRICS

notebook

Geopolitics, the Scandinavian way

notebook

The deep history behind America’s Greenland gambit

essays

Russia cannot conquer Ukraine

notebook

The betrayal of Ukraine

notebook

Nothing is worse than an inconclusive peace

notebook

Partygoing at the opera

book-review

The art of Éric Rohmer

notebook

My journey to a defiant Ukraine

notebook

Bringing back the stately quadrille

notebook

The pen that became a symbol of France

notebook

The power of pilgrimage

book-review

An empire of ivory and inhumanity

book-review

Henry Fuseli knew about nightmares

book-review

How a Republic falls

book-review

Is this free speech?

book-review

Shostakovich spoke truth to power

notebook

A leisurely guide to a spiritual life

notebook

The art of the hedgerow

notebook

The historical power of Jan Matejko’s painting

notebook

Kashmir’s forgotten war goes global

essays

Countryside writing’s rebirth

book-review

The times and tides of the wild River Thames

book-review

Ukraine’s deep strike

notebook

England’s time of troubles

book-review

Lillie Langtry and the business of beauty

portraits

The Islamic Republic on the ropes

notebook