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319 results

Why we don’t remember pandemics

notebook

Information loss

essays

Challenging the ‘Great Reset’ theory of pandemics

essays

Wise warnings matter even more in this age of pandemics and big data

essays

How manga shapes Japanese identity

essays

This crisis has the capacity to be apocalyptic

essays

Counting the cost of the 1918-19 pandemic

essays

2020: Putting our pandemic in perspective

essays

Ancient lessons for modern crisis

essays

The endless frontier

essays

Cats rule

notebook

Art, History and Pandemics with Tom Holland

podcasts

Doing our duty at home and abroad — A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid by Peter Hennessy review

book-review

China: The great uncoupling

essays

EI Weekly Listen — Hew Strachan on the cost of the 1918-19 pandemic 

podcasts

EI Weekly Listen – Mark Honigsbaum: Challenging the ‘Great Reset’ theory of pandemics

podcasts

The demon of the house

notebook

The empty metropolis

essays

Rediscovering Germany

notebook

Meet the Zoomer generation

essays

Future proof

essays

Geopolitics of a pandemic

essays

EI Weekly Listen — You are not as clever as you think by Mark Pagel

podcasts

Why we make lists

notebook

EI Weekly Listen – Helen Thompson: Geopolitics of a pandemic

podcasts

Are we ready for the new humans?

book-review

Books of the Year 2023

book-review

Beppe Fenoglio: A Complex Centenary

notebook

EI Weekly Listen — The Gospel of Thomas: casting a new light on Early Christianity by Elaine Pagels

podcasts

Know your enemy

essays

Working From Anywhere — the holiday never stops

notebook

The People’s Republic of SF

essays

Three victories and a defeat

essays

The cult of Jacob Boehme

portraits

What the Silicon Valley idealists got wrong

essays

Inside the disinformation forever war

essays

The many meanings of Georgia O’Keeffe

notebook

Stuck in Herbert’s Temple

notebook

First in their field — the men and women possessed by the spirit of adventure

book-review

Succession: the end of the line

notebook

The British Empire: a Very English Perspective

book-review

Finding Turkey in Narnia

essays

The salvation of Spinoza

essays

Globalisation: why it went into retreat

essays

What is England really made of?

book-review

What the Romans did for fun

notebook

Covid-19 and the moral case for personal judgement

essays

Fighting back against Russia — the return of propaganda

notebook

Learning from Asian philosophies of rebirth

essays

Playing with demons — how thought experiments guide scientific innovation

essays

In praise of music’s uselessness

notebook

Rewriting Spanish history, one song at a time

essays

The shifting fortunes of IS-Khorasan

book-review

Giovannino Guareschi: Italian Orwell

portraits

Neverending story

notebook

The human need for war

essays

Genius has its limits

notebook

Great Books: Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy

book-review

Posthumous publication is a wicked literary problem

notebook

Books of the Year

book-review

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca – conquistador brawler turned defender of Indigenous American Rights

portraits

Michael Baxandall’s Renaissance ecstasy

book-review

Curt Bloch’s underwater resistance

book-review

From the Silk Road to the information superhighway

essays

Time running out in China’s waiting game — The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi review

book-review

How Arcadia was won and lost and found again

essays

Globalisation — lessons from George Canning on how to remake trade

essays

The intelligent use of history — what is the past good for?

essays

The possibility of elsewhere

notebook

Resilient London will regenerate

notebook

The History of Quarantine with Lincoln Paine

podcasts

How Taiwan won the semiconductor race

notebook

Liberty at risk as threats to freedom grow

essays

A Year in Ideas

essays

Mustang: the heart of Nepal’s China dream

notebook

The invention of Catherine the Great

essays

Great Books: E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops

book-review

Missing the theatre of everyday life

notebook

Nature through the eyes of two Victorians: a birdwatcher and his big-game hunting brother

essays

The Elizabethan era is laid to rest

essays

What does Xi Jinping really think?

essays

The vitality of Western civilisation

essays

An endless dialogue between past and present

essays

The many meanings of the age of upheaval

essays

When Dickens made his masterpiece

essays

John Perry Barlow and the struggle for the independence of cyberspace

essays

On the art of metallurgy

notebook

Anna Komnene – the princess who chronicled Byzantium’s changing fortunes

portraits

Amanda McKittrick Ros – romance unbounded

portraits

Shaping society — The Making of Our Urban Landscape by Geoffrey Tyack review

book-review

You are not as clever as you think

essays

The merrie histories of R.J. Unstead

notebook

The war for hearts and minds: the evolution of al-Qaeda’s media strategy

essays

Who’s seeing your data and why?

essays

Singing Byrd in a cage

notebook

Great Books: Albert Camus’ Le premier homme

book-review

In praise of the ellipsis

notebook

The birth of theosophy

essays

Jane the Virgin: Metafictional telenovela par excellence

notebook

Element of the absurd — In Search of Romania by Dennis Deletant review

book-review

The Empire strikes back

essays

Fire in the sky — a history of meteoritics

essays

The spirit of Hilary Mantel

notebook

Bond or Blofeld: war, espionage and secrecy in the twenty-first century

essays

Great Books: The Sorrows of Satan by Marie Corelli

book-review

The infinite delight of Italo Calvino

book-review

Great Books: Virginia Woolf’s Flush: A Biography

book-review

Simon Leys — the cosmopolitan scholar who broke the rules of Sinology

portraits

Great Books: Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie

book-review

Great Books: Alistair Horne’s The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916

book-review

Getting the CIA in working order

book-review

Larkin, prophet of postmodernism

book-review

Shakespeare’s Sisters: a women’s canon

notebook

Ghostwriting History

notebook

John Hersey’s lasting testament

book-review

The Vault of Heaven: Silvio Berlusconi’s final resting place

notebook

This isn’t Europe

book-review

Banishing Pétain’s ghost

book-review

The many worlds of Peter Brown

essays

The politician’s swift route to mockery

notebook

The many worlds of Margaret Cavendish

book-review

Among the Italians

notebook

Auden’s Austrian summer

book-review

The strange death of private life

essays

Napoleon can’t conquer the silver screen

notebook

Spinoza’s radical enlightenment

book-review

Roald Dahl’s readable but regrettable Uncle Oswald

notebook

Peter Viereck: Psychoanalyst of Nazism

portraits

When everything is empire

book-review

Homosexuality’s forbidden histories

book-review

Kafka’s goodbye to Berlin

notebook

Kind of Blue’s quiet mystery

book-review

Turin’s touch of the divine

notebook

Chamonix’s Sea of Ice — warning to a warming world

notebook

The lost art of listening

notebook

In search of Proustian little moments that make life worthwhile

notebook

The American dream making a come back

notebook

China rethinking its role

essays

Troubled waters

essays

Her Great Quality

notebook

Confucius, competition and modern China’s misuse of meritocracy

essays

We were on a break

notebook

Classics in the cul-de-sacs

notebook

Good poetry in a crisis

notebook

First orders please

notebook

Nepal’s shifting loyalties — All Roads Lead North: China, Nepal and the Conquest for the Himalayas by Amish Raj Mulmi review

book-review

Robert Adam and building beautiful

essays

Do we really know what war is anymore? — The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide To The New Way of War by Mark Galeotti review

book-review

Inauguration and the power of American ritual

notebook

When artists retrain

notebook

The geopolitical fight to come over green energy

essays

When disaster strikes

essays

Battling for the best and brightest: immigration, great power rivalry, and the history of talent importation

essays

More than a bandstand

notebook

Space and the new struggle for civilisational supremacy

essays

The Germans and their cars: history of a love affair

essays

A world without glamorous Shanghai is the poorer for it

notebook

Towards an Arcadian future

essays

How Elizabeth II created the role of the modern monarch

notebook

A very medieval cost of living crisis

notebook

Breaking the nuclear taboo

essays

Sanctions as potent yet unwieldy weapons of war

book-review

The year the West woke up

essays

Trust is the key to geopolitical strength

essays

The price of freedom

essays

The future of war is here

essays

Pulling at the threads of astrology

notebook

What is the British Army for?

notebook

Locked arms: looming threats to the Romania-NATO partnership

notebook

Pensions in a time of kings

notebook

Hacktivism’s Cold War Turns Hot

essays

China-US rivalry risks dividing the EU

essays

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin — the first and only British woman to win a Nobel Prize in science

portraits

The ever-changing face of Istanbul

notebook

Epitaph on a mafioso’s grave

notebook

The ins and outs of the European project

book-review

Polycrisis? What polycrisis?

notebook

Securing Scandinavia

notebook

Europe’s eastward march

essays

Explaining the Golden Era

notebook

The West needs to wake up

essays

Fay Schopen, 1975-2023

notebook

A deep history of Canadian populism

essays

Leadership in crisis – why the West needs Plato more than ever

essays

God is back

essays

Cookie Policy

page

Resisting the saccage of Paris

notebook

Anna de Noailles — a prodigious life

portraits

A very modern revival

notebook

The cloak-and-dagger intrigue of Italian presidential elections

notebook

Ernest Benn against the Census and the forces of Bumbledom

notebook

Bat-and-ball-games — an Italian obsession

notebook

A ship without a captain — Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok review

book-review

Akinpelu Obisesan — a gentleman diarist in colonial Africa

portraits

Digital dictatorship: a brutal examination of the UAE

book-review

Historical decadence — The Persians: The Age of the Great Kings by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones review

book-review

Klára Dán — esoteric intellect who wrote the first modern computer code

portraits

The future of war: embrace the new, remember the old

book-review

The Nation in Arms: Myth or reality?

essays

In defence of the Habsburgs

essays

Grey matters

notebook

A government of laws

essays

Modern France and the ghosts of the past

essays

The joy of books

book-review

The Sahara by armchair

notebook

The polymath in the age of specialisation

essays

Thomas Gage – a man of unintended consequences

portraits

The triumph of the Motherland

essays

Humanism matters in the age of AI

essays

Great Books: Voss by Patrick White

book-review

‘Make it New’ — the rewards of novelty in ancient literature

notebook

Decline in three dimensions

essays

Fantasy in Middle Eastern nation-making

essays

Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan — for Xi, it’s personal

notebook

The moderate life of Decimus Magnus Ausonius

portraits

Waugh’s war

notebook

Traitorous Blake motivated by Cold War convictions

essays

A garden of schizophrenics

essays

History while it’s still smoking

essays

Yosano Akiko — a great of modern Japanese poetry

portraits

On betrayal

essays

Upstairs, downstairs, demolished – the changing fate of the English country house

essays

Five Eyes: the past, present and future of the world’s key intelligence alliance

essays

The restless search for fun wars

essays

America – nation of myth-makers

essays

A world of nations and states is here to stay

essays

The first Yugoslav

notebook

Philip Thicknesse — libertine turned ornamental hermit

portraits

The Gospel of Thomas: casting a new light on Early Christianity

essays

Why Jihadists write poetry

essays

Jaan Kross — a writer’s route to happiness

portraits

Adam Smith: the first anti-capitalist?

essays

The century of the gene

essays

Dunwich’s very English apocalypse

notebook

The countryside captured the novel

notebook

Who is the real Lady Whistledown?

notebook

Milton vs the echo chamber

notebook

The secrets of the special relationship

book-review

Dealing with the past – a Russian history

essays

The Eurasian Century, Part IV: Cold War

essays

The Platinum Jubilee — the joys of Pomp and Circumstance

notebook

Remembering Wilhelm Furtwängler

notebook

When King Cetshwayo came to London

notebook

Painting by numbers

notebook

Great Books: Charles Dickens’ Hard Times

book-review

The forgotten lessons of First World War strategy

essays

The Middle East: Kissinger’s masterpiece?

book-review

Heinrich Biber — composer of rapture and ravings

portraits

John Hughes and the making and unmaking of the American dream

essays

William ‘Basher’ Dowsing — activist iconoclast

portraits

Spoken history: the modern importance of indigenous cultures

essays

The rise of the metaverse

notebook

Sweden’s swinging sixties

essays

John McDonald – poker-playing popularizer of game theory

portraits

Olympism: magic, myths and mega-events

notebook

A marriage of the geopolitical, the military and the material — Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II by Paul Kennedy review

book-review

Richard Aldington — the war poet who rejected moral certainties about conflict

portraits

From Saartjie Baartman to Dolly the Sheep: what does genetic integrity mean?

essays

On tea

notebook

Tobias Smollett – a life in caricature

portraits

The forgotten grande dame of English letters

notebook

Orwell in all weathers

notebook

Madame de Pompadour — eighteenth-century fashion and twenty-first-century fads

book-review

The road to Auschwitz

book-review

How the information age really began

essays

The joy of suffering

essays

Digital revolution: a splash in the cognitive space?

essays

Iain Macleod — short-serving chancellor and lost Tory leader

portraits

Ticket to ride in Paris

notebook

Between Hitler and Mussolini: The agony of Pope Pius XII

book-review

Cato v Caesar

book-review

Business burble doesn’t beat real historical understanding

notebook

The many meanings of Anouilh’s Antigone

essays

World Cup has revealed the real Lionel Messi

notebook

Napoleon: the revolutionary who made himself an emperor

book-review

Who created The Paintings for the Temple?

essays

Irina Ratushinskaya — Soviet dissident who fought the good fight

portraits

The Suez Canal Purchase and the making of modern Britain

essays

In defence of architecture

book-review

The White Revolutionaries

essays

Liberty and the myth of Venice

essays

Leo Africanus’ uncertain world

book-review

Russia’s Scramble for Africa

book-review

The Anonymous Canon

notebook

Can Epic Poetry Revive History?

essays

Cyprian Ekwensi: Lagos life in the raw

portraits

The Franco-Prussian War was more than an historical event

book-review

A musical masterpiece

book-review

The long tail of elite violence

book-review

The invention of the average

book-review

Europe’s forgotten people

book-review

Hegel’s philosophy of history

book-review

Marion Dönhoff: the very best of Germany

notebook

Imperial Miasma Theory

essays

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy revisited

essays

Lucretius’ life-saving poem

essays

Realism meets reality

book-review

Giacomo Puccini: untormented genius

notebook

The sound of salvation: music against the Nazis

book-review

On Jewish identity

notebook

Israel’s new Yom Kippur

essays

Iranians know who their enemy is, and it’s not Israel

notebook

A Chinese history to start a fire

book-review

How history’s quest for truth became a call to action

essays

Jules Verne’s paradoxes of progress

notebook

Canada’s Pacific railway: an iron spine for a paper nation

book-review

Vienna’s vapour trail

book-review

A paean to Shane MacGowan

notebook

A French Revolution in fragments

book-review

The long fall of the Slavic nation

essays

Writing in the New Year

notebook

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and the humanity of history

notebook

The dialects of Joseph Wright

portraits

Why Zelenskyy fired Zaluzhnyi

notebook

The most dangerous of short stories

notebook

Attlee’s shadow

book-review

All hail King Zog?

book-review

Interwar architecture was much more than modernism

book-review

The magnificent unreality of Barbara Comyns

book-review