For all his qualities as a filmmaker, Peter Jackson’s representation of Denethor shows how he is unable to fuse the genius of Tolkien and the rich sensibility he brought to bear in what he termed ‘the cauldron of story’ – the common weal of imagination that produced the great sagas, Old English epics and folklore – into his own art.
All the joy has gone out of modern Tennis, which privileges power and mathematical strategic thinking. It’s time to rediscover what makes ball games so much fun – comedy, lightness and a sense of play.
On the latest edition of History Lessons, Mattias Hessérus is in conversation with historian Andrew Roberts on his mission to repair the reputation of Britain’s most maligned and misunderstood monarch.
Studying the evolution of Austria in the 20th century offers deep insight into essential Western political categories. Read by Leighton Pugh.
The story of how, over the course of three generations, the royal dynasty of Wessex went from near oblivion to fashioning a kingdom that still endures today is the most remarkable and momentous in the island’s history. Read by Leighton Pugh.
The early modern Italian republics are often portrayed as models of bad government. But the fusion of civic humanism and Christianity they championed endures to this day. Read by Leighton Pugh.
Iain Martin is joined by leading security and international relations experts to discuss the legacy of 9/11, the future of Western-led interventions and the meaning of the NATO exit from Afghanistan. Can the West continue to shape world order or is it being replaced? This episode was recorded on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.
Nationalism is often thought of as a modern development – but its traces can be found in antiquity. Read by Leighton Pugh.
Forget the seduction of grand theories and presentist moral judgments. To learn the lessons of the past, the great foreign policy analysts of our age must rediscover the art of historical discernment. Read by Leighton Pugh.
As Britons fulfil their Census obligations this week, they’ll do well to take a note from Sir Ernest Benn’s libertarian resistance to bureaucracy.
As Proust noted, our incremental memories of the world are the foundation of our lives – but where have they gone?
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to endless list-making and tally-counting. History shows us that this is a fundamental human need.
Mattias Hessérus is in conversation with Fredrik Logevall – author of the new, landmark work on the making of JFK.
Blindness offers a metaphor for the perils of worldly delusion. And the physically blind can sometimes discover new ways of seeing.
Iain Martin with guests Adrian Wooldridge and Vernon Bogdanor discusses the Covid crisis and the long-term impact that it might have on the development of the West.
Cricket was one of the few sports that was played near-normally this summer – its modern form is a welcome emblem of global connection.
In this episode of History Lessons, Mattias Hessérus is joined by Alexander Lee to discuss Machiavelli’s life and works. Was he always an adept politician? And was he as immoral as is often claimed?
In this episode of History Lessons, Mattias Hesserus and Jessica Frazier are in conversation about the differences between Eastern and Western philosophies of crisis. Is the desire for a return to ’normal’ inherently western? What can we learn from narratives of rebirth? And, was the global lockdown a mass-participation yogic experiment?
The folkloric atmosphere suggested by a title like Once Upon a Time in Iraq a landmark documentary on the long catastrophe of Saddam’s atrocities, the US-led
How did the West land in, what we might politely call, a ‘sub-optimal’ position? And is a revival of the West feasible? To discuss these questions Iain Martin is joined by Peter Frankopan and David Frum.
On this episode of History Lessons, Mattias Hessérus is joined by the historian and author Andrew Roberts to look through the careers of great figures like Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher (as well as some of history’s great villains, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin) and see how they handled the pressure of a crisis.
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