Essays

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

Advertisement of a huge open refrigerator stuffed with food, with a little girl reaching for a pink cake, 1955. Screen print from a photograph.

How mechanical refrigeration changed the world

The elaborate infrastructure we have created in order to eat food before it rots is one of the great triumphs of modern civilisation.

Jonathan Rees July 21, 2020

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Duality, determinism and demography: The Greeks on geopolitics

The Greeks invented the notion of the interrelationship of geography and politics; indeed, they elaborated it in myriad ways.

Barry Strauss July 21, 2020

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Suffering — the price of being alive: an Islamic perspective

Islam - unlike Christianity - may not have a central motif of pain, sin and suffering, but it reveals so much about what it means to live with adversity.

Mona Siddiqui July 20, 2020

The decades-long decline of U.S. industry is acutely reflected in the urban decay of its cities.

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From broken windows to bulldozers

The story of the Cleveland Housing Renewal Project illustrates the tensions at the heart of capitalism and property - between growth and conservation, creation and decay.

Adam Tooze July 17, 2020

Westminster Bridge, London, 1753. Westminster Abbey is on the right. At this date the Thames was a busy city thoroughfare, as can be seen from the amount of traffic on the river, including two state barges. The bridge was completed in 1750.

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Macaulay and the lost optimism of Victorian history

Thomas Babington Macaulay, the laudator temporis acti of the high Victorian age, showed us there is more than one way to write history.

Bruce Anderson July 16, 2020

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The hidden lives of Samurai women

Samurai women in early Japan were cloistered, unseen figures - but it is a mistake to underestimate their importance.

Anne Walthall July 16, 2020

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When Dickens made his masterpiece

Oliver Twist shows us the young genius in the very act of mastering his craft, turning himself, by sheer willpower, into one of the world's greatest writers.

Simon Callow July 13, 2020

A man claiming to be an Al-Qaeda member addresses a crowd gathered in Yemen's southern province of Abyan on December 22, 2009. Men claiming to be Al-Qaeda members have vowed to avenge those killed in a Yemeni air strike on one of the group's training camps in southern Yemen, Al-Jazeera television reported. In a short video aired by the pan-Arab satellite channel, a bearded man holding a microphone and flanked by two armed men addressed a crowd gathered in the Abyan province to mourn those killed in the December 17 air raid. AFP PHOTO/STR == BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE == (Photo credit should read -/AFP via Getty Images)

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Making sense of the Yemen War

If a peace deal is not reached, all the key ingredients are present for Yemen to become a failed state.

Elisabeth Kendall July 7, 2020

Ma Yuan's The Yellow River Breaches its Course, from a series of paintings of water

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Learning from Asian philosophies of rebirth

Asian literature, with its technologically-adept Chinese emperors, Animist Spirit-negotiators, and Yogic sages, shows us how to live well in troubled times.

Jessica Frazier July 6, 2020