Notebooks

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

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Giacomo Puccini: untormented genius

Both accessible and modern, Giacomo Puccini seems far too untroubled and content to be a major artistic figure. It is time we took him and his strikingly contemporary works, which ..

Alexandra Wilson September 27, 2023

Aged men gathering at Fontana dell' Elefante in Piazza Duomo, Catania, Sicily.

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Italy’s strangely seductive culture of mediocrity

Almost six million Italians now live outside their country, many of them young and highly skilled, fleeing an everyday life marked by pressapochismo ('sloppiness'). But many more s..

Tobias Jones September 25, 2023

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The ‘secretaries’ of MI6

While the activities of many agents in the First and Second World Wars have been known, the stories and legacies of the 'secretaries' of MI6 are only just beginning to be revealed.

Helen Fry September 22, 2023

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The centrist as saviour

Rory Stewart joins a long line of figures who portray enlightened technocracy as the centre-ground solution for British politics.

Angus Reilly September 14, 2023

Ukrainian servicemen prepare to fire at Russian positions from a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer in Kharkiv region, Ukraine.

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Ukraine and the West: an alliance by proxy

The conflict in Ukraine is an example of a new informal turn in the way alliances such as NATO fight wars.

Andrew Mumford September 13, 2023

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Folke Hero

The assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte seventy-five years ago, robbed the world of one of its great humanitarians, and did early and lasting damage to the Middle East peace pr..

Elisabeth Braw September 12, 2023

Start of the public horse at the Palio de Siena.

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Among the Italians

David Gilmour’s The Pursuit of Italy was published in 2011. It retains its allure as one of the finest evocations of Italophilia.

Bruce Anderson September 12, 2023

An Attic black-figured lekythos from the 6th century B.C. depicting the escape from Cyclops in the Odyssey.

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The first Great Escape

Reports that a prisoner escaped Wandsworth jail on the underside of a food truck is bound to raise an echo with classicists and readers of ancient Greek literature. It might be the..

Armand D'Angour September 8, 2023

Christopher Coker at the Engelsberg Seminar

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Christopher Coker, 1953-2023

Christopher Coker, a formidable scholar of international relations and supporter of Engelsberg Ideas, has died at the age of 70.

Engelsberg Ideas September 7, 2023