Even in exile, Christmas offers a glimpse of hope that today’s struggles will one day fade into memory. Christmas in exile | Fergus Butler-Gallie engelsbergideas.com/notebook/chr...

Nice to be asked to pick my books of the year by @alastairbenn.bsky.social for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/book...

Contributors to Engelsberg Ideas highlight the books they’ve enjoyed in 2025. Books of the Year 2025 | Engelsberg Ideas engelsbergideas.com/reviews/book...

Zadie Smith and the perils of broad-mindedness | Tomiwa Owolade engelsbergideas.com/reviews/zadi...

The long tail of Seoul’s political crisis | John Nilsson-Wright engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-l...

Albert Camus’ notebooks show a mind that faced the world squarely, appreciating its strangeness and beauty even in the absence of overarching purpose or ideology. Camus’ life without illusion | William Fear engelsbergideas.com/reviews/camu...

Why not turn Christmastide into a thirteen-day Bach celebration, experiencing the Christmas Oratorio as it was first performed across Leipzig’s feast days in 1734–35? The wonders of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio | Elisabeth Braw engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

Zohran Mamdani's election as mayor of New York City is part of a decades-long clash between competing visions of America's greatest metropolis. The battle for New York | John Ketcham engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-b...

The story of Hanukkah inspires in both its spiritual and worldly dimensions – it is the national epic of the Jewish people. The Jews’ time of miracles | Samuel Rubinstein engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

The West’s complacency over censorship | Bryan Appleyard engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-...

In Montaigne’s French, essays are not yet 'essays' but assays – trials, tests, experiments. Remove belief, whether in philosophy or religion, and what remains? Essaying Montaigne | David Wootton engelsbergideas.com/essays/essay...

For centuries, India's history has been entangled with that of the Tibetan Plateau, a reality that has often fuelled tensions with the People's Republic of China – and may do so again. The troubled history of India’s Tibetan frontier | Ved Shinde engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

A new biography of Saint Augustine returns this towering figure of western philosophy to his North African origins, revealing the provincial schisms that shaped his thought. Augustine’s African roots | Daniel Skeffington engelsbergideas.com/reviews/augu...

In 1937, British officers tried – and failed – to challenge orthodox assumptions about the defence of Singapore. Their experience offers a warning for how NATO should think about Russia today. NATO’s 1937 moment | Andrew Monaghan engelsbergideas.com/notebook/nat...

Saint? 😇 Road-rage killer? 🗡️ Patriot? 🦸🏻‍♂️ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Read my take on the adventurous life of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun on @engelsbergideas.bsky.social. Huge thanks to the editors! 🙏

My bit on Larkin's The Less Deceived, which is 70 this year -and every bit as good as The Whitsun Weddings. Thanks as ever to @engelsbergideas.bsky.social & thank you again to @plsoc.bsky.social for hosting the live version.

The United States must collaborate successfully with its allies if it is to compete with China in the global shipping industry. Maritime allies are America’s superpower | Marc Levinson engelsbergideas.com/essays/marit...

The poet's breakthrough collection, The Less Deceived, anticipated the sexual freedoms of the 1960s while pre-emptively rejecting its promises. Philip Larkin’s arrival, undeceived | @jwikeley.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/phi...

The Locarno Pact, in its naive optimism, seems typical of the 1920s. Its architects knew mankind could not afford to revisit the carnage of the Great War, yet it failed to stop an even bloodier catastrophe. Locarno: the peace that was not to be | Eliot Wilson engelsbergideas.com/notebook/loc...

Dig for Victory, a wartime propaganda operation that tapped into the national psyche, encouraged Britons to grow produce at home. With food security worse than it was in the 1930s, a similar effort is needed today. Digging for victory | Clive Aslet engelsbergideas.com/essays/diggi...

The former Syrian regime was an Arab North Korea that father then son ruled with an iron fist. The Assads’ reign of terror | James Snell engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

A chance discovery in a Tokyo library uncovered a medieval memoir by Lady Nijō, a glimpse into the tradition of female autobiography in Heian and Kamakura Japan. Confessions of a Japanese noblewoman | @katherineharvey.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/con...

Britain has a long history of reservists defending the country in times of crisis. Reviving this tradition is among the most effective ways to secure Europe from Russian aggression. The power of the citizen-soldier | Gary Sheffield engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-p...

The story of three western visitors to Pol Pot’s Cambodia reveals how hard it is to report what one sees rather than what one wants to believe. Facing Pol Pot | Michael Shorris engelsbergideas.com/reviews/faci...

The story of three western visitors to Pol Pot’s Cambodia reveals how hard it is to report what one sees rather than what one wants to believe. Facing Pol Pot | Michael Shorris engelsbergideas.com/reviews/faci...

Britain has a long history of reservists defending the country in times of crisis. Reviving this tradition is among the most effective ways to secure Europe from Russian aggression. The power of the citizen-soldier | Gary Sheffield engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-p...

Homer's great epic is, above all, a palimpsest of the Hellenic art of living well. The world of the Odyssey | Paul Cartledge engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-w...

The debate continues over the maverick general’s tactics, strategy and character. Did his unorthodox genius ultimately serve or damage the Allied cause? Orde Wingate, always audacious | Gordon F. Sander engelsbergideas.com/portraits/or...

Unless the British government can find money to invest in the country's security, the UK's recent Strategic Defence Review will be a fantasy rather than military reality. Britain’s dangerous defence vacuum | Robert Lyman engelsbergideas.com/notebook/bri...

A year after the fall of the Assad regime, Syria's new government confronts domestic challenges and geopolitical hazards. A new Syria struggles to be born | Shiraz Maher engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-new...

A cultural malaise has quietly eroded the West’s confidence in its creativity, reshaping how art is funded, judged, and understood. The post-cultural state | Lola Salem engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

Trump leaves complacent Europe most vulnerable since 1939 | Antony Beevor engelsbergideas.com/notebook/tru...

The future of authoritarian information control depends on the cultivation of its critics. Moscow’s war bloggers and the grammar of dissent | Ksenia Rundin engelsbergideas.com/essays/mosco...

Joseph Smith commanded men in morality, history and religion, drawing thousands of followers to his church, but a lack of strategic insight doomed the Mormon militias that fought for him. When the Mormons had a military | Katherine Bayford engelsbergideas.com/essays/when-...

The French filmmaker's My Night at Maud’s is a festive film like no other. Éric Rohmer’s Christmas classic for adults | Guy Stagg engelsbergideas.com/notebook/eri...

Taiwan need not be a repeat for the United States of the British imperial overreach that ended with the Suez Crisis. Avoiding an American Suez | Nikolas Neos engelsbergideas.com/notebook/avo...

His Czech and Jewish pasts haunted his plays. Tom Stoppard: Englishman, Czech, Jew | Samuel Rubinstein engelsbergideas.com/notebook/tom...

The Canningite tradition | @cowanda.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-c...

Intertwined themes of ecstasy, love, fantasy and flight shaped the composer's world, his music a monument to a man who could not abide permanence. The restless passion of Arnold Bax | Alexander Voltz engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

Germany’s new old nuclear dilemma | @mephenke.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/essays/germa...

ICYMI: Russia's war manpower crisis has spawned global trafficking networks targeting vulnerable populations across the Global South. My recent analysis for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social traces how Moscow's attrition strategy evolved into systematic exploitation. engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

How Europe can harness its economic power | @michaelpettis.bsky.social & Enrico Fardella engelsbergideas.com/essays/how-e...

Andrew Fletcher: modern patriot, tragic hero | Barnabás Szabó engelsbergideas.com/portraits/an...

Thrilled as ever to have written for the exceptional @engelsbergideas.bsky.social about a fascinating discarded French utopia - the Revolutionary calendar.

The Choral shows how music-making can bind together a community, forging connections between people of different backgrounds, occupations and generations. Classical music across the classes | @amwilson.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/clas...

The Republican calendar crystallised a French dream of rationality and symmetry, which echoes in everything from the geometry of garden design to the metric system. The invention of Year Zero | @murielzagha.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

The playwright was a master craftsman of the stage, yet his knowing intellectualism sometimes got in the way of true understanding. Stoppard’s brilliant surfaces | @armanddangour.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/sto...

What makes Carl Schmitt uncannily relevant today is not his theory of international spheres of influence but his sinister, compelling critique of parliamentary democracy. The Schmittian inheritance | Daniel Johnson engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-s...

A versatile painter of preternatural talent, Holbein rode his luck to create the most potent images of the reign of Henry VIII. Holbein, master of images | Michael Prodger engelsbergideas.com/reviews/holb...

Why Russia has come to the table | Peter Caddick-Adams engelsbergideas.com/notebook/why...