Essays

Long-form writing from leading scholars and commentators on history, statecraft, warfare, philosophy and culture.

Demagogues thrive if moderate politicians flatter citizens into an unrealistic sense of their own greatness.

Al-Qaeda's success in Yemen can in part be explained by the group's adept use of poetry as propaganda.

Nationalism is often thought of as a modern development - but its traces can be found in antiquity.

The Hindu tradition of Radha and Krishna calls us to see passion as the kernel of all religion.

Talk of genetic modification is often met with a backlash - but is it as dangerous and drastic as we might think?

Hilma af Klint's work is saturated in the scientific culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

George IV was a dissolute dandy and sybarite - but he was also a brilliant patron of the arts.

The failure of the Austro-Hungarian order spelt the end of the most cosmopolitan culture in Europe's history.

Without a vision or programme of a different society or future, the left has retreated to pluralism and the idiom of choice as its most radical idea.