The luck of the devil
Lenin and Mussolini were chief among 20th-century leaders who owed their initial success purely to chance, says Ian Kershaw
Making scientific history
In 1993 William Waldegrave, the science minister, was looking into a project being planned on the continent. Cern, the European…
Down to grass roots
Thomas Piketty, the French economist who shot to fame for writing a colossal work of economics that many people bought…
The trouble with Thomas Piketty
Thomas Piketty, the French economist who shot to fame for writing a colossal work of economics that many people bought…
Could Putin be toppled?
The former head of MI6 on where Russia has gone wrong – and what happens next
The threat from within
According to Vladimir Putin, liberalism is an ‘obsolete’ doctrine, a worn-out political philosophy no longer fit for purpose. In this…
Inside Putin’s mind
The lessons of Chechnya
The great divide
According to Nina Power’s forceful and rather unusual What Do Men Want?, we in the West are currently engaged in…
The frailty of love
In the months before the outbreak of the first world war, Anton Heideck arrives in Vienna. Family life offered him…
Eye-popping misogyny
There’s no doubt that Quentin Tarantino is a movie director of brilliance, if not genius. But can he write? Well…
The state we’re in
As Britain starts its long Covid recovery, are deeper problems lurking beneath the surface? Matthew d’Ancona certainly thinks so, and…
The world held its breath
Nuclear weapons carry a payload of cold logic: if both sides have them, neither will ever use them. But in…
Advance warning
Too much weight is put on the idea of ‘progress’
It wasn’t rocket science Jay Elwes
In the summer of 2012, a man was walking near Jabal Shashabo, a Syrian rebel enclave, when he spotted a…
A unique way of thinking
An old, cynical adage holds that ‘if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. I remembered…
Blood and lust
In June 793, a raiding force arrived by boat at the island monastery of Lindisfarne, on the Northumbrian coast. The…
Beating the cheats
On 6 May 2010 the eurozone crisis was tearing through the continent. Greece was bankrupt, and it looked as though…
How far should we go?
Modern advances in communication technology, computer power and medical science can sometimes be so startling as to seem almost like…
Bloodbath in the Pacific
The US operation of 1945 to take the island of Okinawa was the largest battle of the Pacific during the…
Don’t judge an album by its cover
Everything about Kraftwerk was odd. They had no front man, they seemed to play no instruments and their strange, electronic…
Liberty depends on a delicate balance between state and society
Liberty is a fragile thing. For thousands of years, civilisations have risen, flourished and fallen, and most of them have…
How Klaus Fuchs’s treachery may have averted Armageddon
When Klaus Fuchs started passing atomic secrets to the KGB, he changed the course of world events. Forget about Philby…
Will we ever recover?
Jay Elwes 2 April 2022 9:00 am
Modern British history can be divided into two parts: before Covid and after. That is the central pillar of this…