Notebooks

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

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The solitude of Barbara

France's great melancholic singer deserves an audience beyond the francophone world.

Paul Lay July 22, 2026

A fight between Argentina and Spain after the world cup final.

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Rioplatense football’s death drive

Argentina's World Cup campaign was a study in self-sabotage, one with a long literary pedigree.

Andreas Campomar July 22, 2026

Election poster for Konrad Adenauer in 1957.

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Adenauer, the German Disraeli

The chancellor who rebuilt West Germany after the Second World War showed, like Benjamin Disraeli before him, how a conservative party at ease with modernity can be a stabilising f..

Lukas Schmelter July 22, 2026

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Against the convenient city

Convenience is remaking urban life in its own image. But a city worth living in is one where you have to rub along with other people.

Alastair Benn July 21, 2026

A statue of Richard Cobden in Manchester.

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The first Manchesterism meant free trade

Britain's new prime minister could find inspiration in the free-trade radicals of the 19th-century Manchester School, and in liberalism's forgotten economic potential.

Max Skjönsberg July 20, 2026

A fresco in Pompeii of Hephaestus' workshop.

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Did Homer dream of androids?

The Iliad is full of self-driving machines and androids with minds of their own. The ancient world's dream of intelligence reveals very human desires.

David Lloyd Dusenbury July 17, 2026

James Daugherty's painting of Sir Francis Drake at sea.

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Sport is adventure by other means

Western democracies play out their appetites for risk within the artificial confines of sport, an impulse that runs especially deep in the English national character.

Alastair Benn July 16, 2026