Notebooks

Notebooks are snapshots from our writers, reflecting on current affairs and underappreciated aspects of culture and history.

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England’s unusual individualism

The individualist strain in English culture was a contingent, precarious, and exceedingly unusual thing.

Samuel Rubinstein February 21, 2025

Harold 'Kim' Philby, one of the Cambridge Five.

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The beginning of the end for the Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five have achieved a near-mythical status in the history of espionage. Yet their story is about a bygone age whose ideological struggles no longer resonate with the s..

Dan Lomas February 21, 2025

The flags of NATO and Sweden in Kyiv, Ukraine.

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Sweden’s Zeitenwende

Like Germany, the Scandinavian state is undergoing an epochal shift in its position within Europe – and the world – in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Jack Dickens February 20, 2025

The British military at Port Said during the Suez Crisis.

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The pitfalls of hindsight

History provides an illuminating insight into past and present events, but employing false analogies divorced from historical context can have disastrous consequences.

Gill Bennett February 19, 2025

Vladimir Putin addresses the delegates at the Munich Security Conference in 2007.

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Europe’s reckoning with history

The United States no longer sees Europe’s security as an issue of vital international importance. If European leaders fail to develop a prudent and practical grand strategy, the co..

Vladislav Zubok February 18, 2025

The Pentagon press briefing room at the US Department of Defense.

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Trump’s gamble

A purge of America's national security bureaucracy may have disastrous consequences in wartime.

Joshua Rovner February 17, 2025

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin sit on the patio of Livadia Palace, Yalta, Crimea.

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Defying the lessons of history

After the failures at Yalta at the end of the Second World War, the West finally learned not to trust the word of European dictators. Negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine ri..

Keith Lowe February 15, 2025