Notebooks

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Fighting back against Russia — the return of propaganda

The Western alliance has got serious about coordinating its dissemination of intelligence, but it needs to avoid its pitfalls.

Jamie Gaskarth April 14, 2022

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What Putin learnt from NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo

Putin took a clear lesson from NATO’s 1999 bombing of Serbia. His opponents' failure to understand this stunted their ability to plan for Putin’s most recent invasion.

Tim Marshall April 8, 2022

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

The Russian army has had its fair share of military disasters with its most recent in Ukraine being a clear product of a system that refuses to accept the truth and only deals in e..

Rob Johnson April 8, 2022

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Bucha atrocities are an intrinsic part of the Russian way of war

Russian concepts of collective responsibility guide how its army deals with partisan warfare with horrifying consequences.

Jack Watling April 4, 2022

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Rising from the ruins of war, Coventry Cathedral shows the power of reconciliation

Sir Basil Spence’s Coventry Cathedral remains an overwhelming triumph and feels just as enduring and ageless as any of Britain’s great medieval cathedrals.

James Hardie April 1, 2022

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Who are the modern Greeks?

For the west, Greece is classical Greece, the birthplace of western culture, thought, and democracy, while for the Slavic-speaking world it is a brother-nation of the Orthodox chur..

Edward Thicknesse March 31, 2022

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Kerouac Abroad, Kerouac at Sea and Kerouac Out There

Many view reading Jack Kerouac as an embarrassing phase — but his work articulates so much more than American youthful rebellion.

Malcolm Forbes March 30, 2022

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Illuminated by Sidney Lumet, beyond reasonable doubt

Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men should be on the school curriculum — has there been a more relevant film to watch today in our era of populism, over simplistic arguments, and fake..

Agnès Poirier March 22, 2022

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Solzhenitsyn, Putin and the historical myth-making that drives Russian imperialism

Undeniably there are deep cultural and political ties between Russia and Ukraine. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a hero in much of the West, but he helped inspire in Putin a destructiv..

Tomiwa Owolade March 18, 2022