Notebooks

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

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Dumas’ philosophy of hope

Alexandre Dumas' 'The Count of Monte Cristo' remains the great novel of hope, as a recent revival shows.

Alastair Benn June 17, 2026

A box of Soviet Belomorkanal cigarettes.

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Why reviving Stalin’s Arctic canal is a strategic prize for Russia

Russian strategists have called for expanding the Belomorkanal, the Soviet relic linking the Arctic and the Baltic, into a route that could bypass some of the world's major trading..

Brigita Van den Houta June 16, 2026

The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 by David Hockney during a press preview for Sotheby. Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc.

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Hockney’s art of looking

Seen through the Bradford-born artist's eyes, the world will always be endlessly beautiful.

Cath Pound June 16, 2026

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The genius of Miles Davis

Essential reading, viewing, and listening from the EI editors.

Paul Lay June 10, 2026

A panoramic view of the ancient city of Tyre.

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Tyre: a city in the sea

The heritage of Tyre, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, is under threat in the latest phase of the conflict in South Lebanon.

Katherine Pangonis June 9, 2026

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends commemoration ceremony at Tokpaki Cemetary.

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Erdogan’s coup is complete

The Turkish president has pacified his country's political opposition, bringing about the culmination point of two decades of pragmatic authoritarianism.

Hannah Lucinda Smith June 8, 2026

Victor Vasnetsov's 1898 painting, Bogatyrs.

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The statecraft of the steppe

Russia's geopolitics has been shaped by centuries of dealing with both the settled communities of the west and the nomadic peoples of the steppe to its east and south.

David Chaffetz June 8, 2026