Notebooks

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

Roman marble sculpture bust of the Emperor Tiberius.

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Did Tiberius have a grand strategy?

Tiberius, Augustus' successor as emperor of Rome, is best-known for the excesses of his personal life. But it is the traditional challenges he faced as ruler – and his responses to..

Peter Stothard May 14, 2024

The reconstruction of Notre Dame de Paris.

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The bells, the bells

The resurrection of Notre-Dame de Paris continues apace. Its symbolic new bells are close to completion.

Agnès Poirier May 13, 2024

The chorus of women in a performance of Euripides' The Bacchae, 1982.

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The madness of crowds

The sense of belonging that comes with following a multitude can blind crowds to rational debate and reason.

Armand D'Angour May 13, 2024

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Celebrating a century of the red telephone box

The red telephone box has joined the policeman’s helmet, the Brigade of Guards, the red post box and the 1980s punk rocker on the King’s Road as a signifier of Britain's national i..

Clive Aslet May 8, 2024

The Scottish Parliament building in the snow from Salisbury Crags, Edinburgh.

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The strange death of Scotland’s political virtues

The Scottish elite has traded moral seriousness for the sugar rush of ‘progressive’ idealism.

Alastair Benn May 1, 2024

A commemorative stamp of Martin Niemöller

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Martin Niemöller’s stand against Hitler

The Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller's stand against the Nazis symbolises the power and bravery of citizens who resist dictatorship.

Elisabeth Braw April 29, 2024

Xi Jinping waves above a large portrait of the late leader Mao Zedong during a ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

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The making of Xi Jinping, China’s absolute monarch

Xi Jinping may preach Marxism-Leninism with Chinese characteristics but a much older doctrine governs his actions: absolutism.

Michael Sheridan April 22, 2024

Aerial view of severe damage to homes caused by massive floods in the Irkutsk region of Russia, 2019.

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Russia: Nation of floods

Fires, floods and the melting permafrost amount to an ever-growing set of problems for Russia but Putin is too focussed on the war in Ukraine to confront the growing crisis.

Paul Josephson April 17, 2024

Fresco representing Jupiter's lover Leda and the swan on a wall of a spectacular banqueting room with elegant black walls, recently brought to light during the excavations currently underway at Pompeii.

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Mapping Pompeii’s undiscovered country

Archaeologists are steadily chipping away at the mysterious remaining third of Pompeii, which so far has remained hidden.

Daisy Dunn April 12, 2024