Britain's wartime prime minister was heroic and courageous, but his virtues and vices belong to a different age. It is time to find new heroes for the British national pantheon. Let Churchill rest in peace | Brendan Simms engelsbergideas.com/notebook/let...

Trump’s Venezuela playbook may falter in Havana | Joseph Ledford engelsbergideas.com/essays/trump...

Maggie O’Farrell’s 'Hamnet' and its 2025 film adaptation draw extensively on Virgil’s 'Georgics', showing how the classical tradition continues to illuminate enduring human questions. What Hamnet owes to Virgil’s Georgics | Orlando Gibbs engelsbergideas.com/essays/what-...

The successful 1936 Montreux Convention, a grand diplomatic bargain over the Turkish Straits, shows why geopolitical chokepoints need a strong and reliable status quo power to act as gatekeeper. How to manage a geopolitical chokepoint | Emily Wang engelsbergideas.com/notebook/how...

Eight centuries after his death, Francis of Assisi, ascetic, poet and visionary, still embodies a transformative and enduring vision of ‘holy foolishness’. Francis of Assisi: God’s holy fool | Richard Marranca engelsbergideas.com/portraits/fr...

🎧The EI Podcast: The Houthis’ forever war Elisabeth Kendall speaks to Jack Dickens about what motivates the Islamist group. audioboom.com/posts/888264...

For Leonardo Sciascia, Sicily serves as a microcosm of Italy, reflecting the nation’s broader power struggles and the pervasive reach of Mafia corruption. The unsolved crimes of Sciascia’s Sicily | Ian Thomson engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

Long before modern debates over diet, early Christians questioned whether abstaining from meat signalled true piety. The virtues of vegetarianism | John Merrington engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-v...

The notion that Beijing is the chief beneficiary of the US-Iran conflict is wide of the mark. Why the war in Iran is not a gift to China | George Magnus engelsbergideas.com/notebook/why...

Robin Holloway’s monumental 'Music’s Odyssey' and Tom Service’s 'A History of the World in 50 Pieces' offer sharply contrasting visions of how the story of western classical music should be told. Writing the history of classical music | Benjamin Poore engelsbergideas.com/reviews/writ...

Shared identity makes alliances sticky. Enlightened leadership helps them endure. When a dominant alliance member threatens either one of those, even solid alliances are at risk. I wrote this last year for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social—seems all too relevant now: engelsbergideas.com/essays/regim...

Arthur Miller’s 'Broken Glass' explores how memories of the Holocaust filter into Jewish American identity. Arthur Miller and the memory of catastrophe | Malcolm Forbes engelsbergideas.com/reviews/arth...

Mired in an open-ended confrontation with the Islamic Republic, President Trump is faced with a painful choice between launching a new forever war or accepting a humiliating defeat. Trump’s unwinnable war | Eldad Shavit & Jesse R. Weinberg engelsbergideas.com/notebook/tru...

Set during the drama of the French and Indian War, James Fenimore Cooper’s epic tale of survival, love and vengeance captures the many contradictions at the heart of America's national story. The Last of the Mohicans and the American soul | Alec Marsh engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-l...

🎧The EI Podcast: The need for muscular liberalism. Adrian Wooldridge speaks to EI’s Paul Lay about the need to rediscover and revive the liberal tradition. audioboom.com/posts/887906...

"If Trump is going to ape America’s domineering adventures of the late 19th century, he should have more of an eye on the thinking that was guiding it." Thoughts @engelsbergideas.bsky.social on how America developed a key geopolitical idea...then forgot it: engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ame...

"[T]his conflict is merely the latest chapter in a struggle that has unfolded for nearly 50 years." @ibrahimpasha.bsky.social & @tanyagoudsouzian.bsky.social for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ira...

US grand strategy was once guided by a sound understanding of the importance of chokepoints, a vital aspect of geopolitics that the Trump administration has neglected at its peril. America’s fatal chokepoint | @philtinline.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ame...

‘Metamorphoses’, the Rijksmuseum’s exhibition of art inspired by the works of Ovid, shows how the Roman poet's epic of change has resonated through the centuries. Ovid’s perpetual motion | Boyd Tonkin engelsbergideas.com/reviews/ovid...

The roots of the current conflict go back to the origins of the Islamic Republic and the seismic shockwaves it unleashed across the Middle East. Iran and America’s long war | @ibrahimpasha.bsky.social and @tanyagoudsouzian.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ira...

It is half a century since Tom Wolfe coined the phrase the 'Me Decade'. The age of Me is over. The age of Them has begun | Bryan Appleyard engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

🎧Audio essay: Can epic poetry revive History? When combined, as the ancients knew, history and poetry offer an incomparable insight into the human condition. Michael Auslin laments the demise of poetry as a form for exploring great moments in history. audioboom.com/posts/888048...

Istanbul’s descent into darkness | Hannah Lucinda Smith engelsbergideas.com/essays/istan...

The Soviet Union was a society defined by the constant tension between revolutionary promise and everyday hardship. How the Soviet Union lived and died | Caroline Eden (@edentravels.bsky.social) engelsbergideas.com/reviews/how-...

How does the war in Iran look from Asia? My take:

In the face of the Iran war’s impact on global oil flows, Asian capitals are reassessing energy security and the broader geopolitical map. The Iran war through Asia’s eyes | @drchrisharding.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-i...

What does the US-Iran conflict tell us about American power in the Middle East and beyond? Make sure to read this excellent article by Ronan to find out:

George Kennan’s writings offers an alternative lens for understanding Washington’s contemporary approach to great-power competition in Africa. Kennan’s realistic approach to Washington’s Africa strategy | Sam Wilkins engelsbergideas.com/essays/kenna...

Why the US remains a major Middle Eastern power | @ronanmainprize.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/why...

🎧 Audio essay: The first butterfly collectors The Society of Aurelians brought butterflies out of their undeserved obscurity. Nigel Andrew’s audio essay sheds new light on Britain’s first entomological society. audioboom.com/posts/887770...

In the 21st century, the post-Enlightenment ‘civilisational state’ may become the ideological model for aspiring great powers. How to navigate global disorder | Aaron McKeil engelsbergideas.com/essays/how-t...

Wagner’s Siegfried, a revolution in sound | Tim Bouverie engelsbergideas.com/reviews/wagn...

📝 NEW | President Trump's siege of the Islamic Republic may ultimately weaken the Iranian regime's influence abroad while strengthening its hand at home. Read Dr Shiraz Maher's latest for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social: engelsbergideas.com/essays/ameri...

President Trump's siege of the Islamic Republic may ultimately weaken the Iranian regime's influence abroad while strengthening its hand at home. America’s paradoxical war in Iran | Shiraz Maher engelsbergideas.com/essays/ameri...

Make sure to read Shiraz Maher’s brilliant essay on the paradoxical consequences of the US-Iran conflict - applied history at its very best:

The great Brendan Simms explains how Trump 2.0 is attempting to transform the American-led world order:

The great Brendan Simms explains how Trump 2.0 is attempting to transform the American-led world order:

Make sure to read Shiraz Maher’s brilliant essay on the paradoxical consequences of the US-Iran conflict - applied history at its very best:

France’s quest for the ocean deep | Daniel Marc Janes engelsbergideas.com/reviews/fran...

🎧 The EI Podcast: Trump’s imperial worldview What is driving Donald Trump’s increasingly volatile foreign policy? Brendan Simms examines the US President and his ideological roots with EI’s Jack Dickens. audioboom.com/posts/887602...

Katsushika Oi: The hidden hand behind Hokusai | @kmgovier.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/portraits/ka...

🎙️ NEW | Dr Shiraz Maher featured on the @engelsbergideas.bsky.social podcast with @jackfdickens.bsky.social last week. In this episode, he examines how the fallout from the US-Iran conflict is reshaping the Gulf States and the wider Middle East. ➡️ Listen here: engelsbergideas.com/podcast/ei-t...

The world of sleep has long fascinated poets, writers, and artists, both as a realm of the imagination and a mysterious source of peril. The art of sleep | @murielzagha.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-...

Choosing culture over victimhood | Bijan Omrani engelsbergideas.com/reviews/choo...

In Europe, America and Russia, an unhealthy obsession with grand geopolitical schemes has often clouded the judgement of statesmen and scholars. The perils of perpetual geopolitics | Vladislav Zubok engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-p...

In the late playwright’s masterpiece, the humanities remain indispensable to any vision of human flourishing. Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia and the power of the humanities | Russ Roberts engelsbergideas.com/notebook/tom...

Len Deighton produced novels that were packed with excitement and suspense but also infused with moral complexity and psychological insight. Len Deighton’s spycraft | Malcolm Forbes engelsbergideas.com/essays/len-d...

Even in death, the Führer’s fate continued to provoke uncertainty and fascination for decades. Hitler’s long afterlife | Tim Bouverie engelsbergideas.com/reviews/hitl...

The IRGC’s way of war | Ashkan Hashemipour engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...