Across our cities and towns, night’s natural darkness is giving way to the glare and dazzle of LED lighting – but to embrace it wholeheartedly is to risk losing more than ominous shadows.
Audacious dynamism and uninhibited creativity defined the music scene in the party-hard 90s – the last decade when outsiders could become bona fide rock n’ roll stars.
The beautiful game seemed made for the Italy of wild hair, baggy shorts and Euro-optimism. But did the glory days of Series A ever really exist?
The breakdown of Yugoslavia in the 1990s shattered optimism in liberal democracy and transnational cooperation. History did not end – it continued.
Pop became Sweden’s biggest cultural export in the 1990s when the hit machine went into overdrive. The roots of it lie in the 1970s and the Swedish love of manufacturing.
It was the decade of Friends, Bill Clinton and a fresh new pan-European passport. Underneath the teen-pop smile of the nineties there were blemishes.
In the digital age, intellectual debate is more polarising and vituperative than ever. To generate the new thinking needed to navigate our uncertain global landscape we should revisit the kind of serious ideas on geopolitics that scholars advanced in the 1990s.
Once admired by contemporaries like Graham Greene, Patrick Hamilton’s gritty tales of down-and-out London are finally receiving the praise they deserve.
Our cities are so saturated in the mythology of the ancient world that classical allusions pop up in unexpected places.
A 17th century reflection on the virtues of travel shows us what is being lost during the pandemic.
The poet Edith Sitwell has more to offer than her infamous reputation suggests.
The King of the Zulus, Cetshwayo, turned defeat into diplomatic success after winning the hearts of the British public.
Reading the Andalusian Arab writer al-Bakri is to go on a magnificent journey through harsh deserts and lands rich in gold watched over by quixotic local rulers.
Inspired by the deserts of his homeland Australia, Patrick White mastered a unique and unsparing prose which continues to resonate with writers the world over.
18th century literary ephemera give us an insight into the true identity of Bridgerton’s elusive Lady Whistledown.
The deceptive tranquility of Norwich’s Mousehold Heath was the setting for the first documented case of the anti-semitic ‘blood libel’ myth.
Why did Joe Biden’s quotation of St. Augustine on society and love strike such a chord?
Hollywood liked Trump and helped make him. Then he became President. Can entertainment and politics be restored to their proper place?
The presidential inauguration makes manifest the complexity and beauty of the American Dream.
In his pets, the Cardinal found liberation from the toils of statecraft. Those care-free animals envy not man’s restraints.
The great dancer Vaslav Nijinsky’s astonishing revival after decades of madness ranks as one of the most mysterious events in art – he found it in himself to have one last dance.
Engelsberg Ideas is brought to you by The Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit
Stureplan 3, SE 103 75 Stockholm, Sweden editors@engelsbergideas.com www.axsonjohnsonfoundation.org
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