Notebooks

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Britain’s dangerous defence vacuum

Unless the British government can find money to invest in the country's security, the UK's recent Strategic Defence Review will be a fantasy rather than military reality.

Robert Lyman December 10, 2025

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The post-cultural state

A cultural malaise has quietly eroded the West’s confidence in its creativity, reshaping how art is funded, judged, and understood.

Lola Salem December 10, 2025

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Trump leaves complacent Europe most vulnerable since 1939

President Trump's new National Security Strategy is incoherent and egotistical. Yet Europe's elites must bear responsibility for leaving their continent in a state of vulnerability..

Antony Beevor December 9, 2025

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Éric Rohmer’s Christmas classic for adults

The French filmmaker's My Night at Maud’s is a festive film like no other.

Guy Stagg December 8, 2025

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Avoiding an American Suez

Taiwan need not be a repeat for the United States of the British imperial overreach that ended with the Suez Crisis.

Nikolas Neos December 8, 2025

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Tom Stoppard: Englishman, Czech, Jew

His Czech and Jewish pasts haunted his plays.

Samuel Rubinstein December 5, 2025

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The restless passion of Arnold Bax

Intertwined themes of ecstasy, love, fantasy and flight shaped the composer's world, his music a monument to a man who could not abide permanence.

Alexander Voltz December 4, 2025

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The invention of Year Zero

The Republican calendar crystallised a French dream of rationality and symmetry, which echoes in everything from the geometry of garden design to the metric system.

Muriel Zagha December 2, 2025

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Stoppard’s brilliant surfaces

The playwright was a master craftsman of the stage, yet his knowing intellectualism sometimes got in the way of true understanding.

Armand D'Angour December 2, 2025