Amnesty International is wrong to brand Alexei Navalny an anti-hero
The response to the political plight of Navalny has demonstrated that many civil rights organisations are neither principled nor brave
Unravelling the myth of George Soros
Emily Tamkin’s ‘The Influence of Soros’ is a lucid, subtle and fair-minded attempt to grapple with a tremendously complex legacy
Stephen Cohen: historian, polemicist and friend of Gorbachev
Cohen was a prophet of America’s decline
The world leaders who battled coronavirus and won
How is it that our most eccentric world leaders have been the ones disproportionately affected by Covid-19?
American puritanism lives on
Judge not a sext lest your sexts be judged
Report from Belarus
There is no one left to fight for Europe’s last dictator and his Soviet utopia
We need more Lord Lebedevs
Evgeny Lebedev’s peerage should be celebrated – other members of the Lords have much closer links to the Kremlin.
A damning report
For Americans, the UK’s Russia report is the proverbial canary in the coal mine
Communal unrest breaks out in France
Vladislav Davidson explains the most bizarre communal violence in recent memory
Macron needs another reboot
The French people are not happy. Can their President do anything to change that?
Budget 2021: What did we get?
Rishi goes back to tax and spend
Sinclair Hood: The archaeologist who bucked orthodoxy
The former director of the British School at Athens, who died last month at the age of 103, had a productivity in his old age that was both rare and admirable
Dominic Hilton’s Buenos Aires diary 6.0
Dominic Hilton comments on the latest perceived injustice in the capital, a man eating dog biscuits, and the strange meaning of numbers in Argentina
Francis Bacon’s love affair with France
Limited to only 206 copies, ‘Francis Bacon: Francophile’ is an attractive book sure to be snapped up by Baconophiles
Why accusations of vaccine nationalism miss the mark
Rather than condemning governments for favouring their own citizens in this way, we should focus on how vaccine surplus can reach poorer parts of the world
The kid stays in the picture
Alright Mr. DeMillions, I’m ready for my close-up
What do the English think of Englishness?
Graham Cunningham asks why Englishness has failed to garner its own version of the self-flattering national mythology of so many other nations
Prince Philip’s military legacy
Prince Philip’s military service deserves to be remembered in its own right
We need to talk about Holocaust issues, but also remember righteous heroes
Marking the European Day of the Righteous, the Polish Ambassador to the UK says that public debate on the Holocaust must remember the praiseworthy acts of righteous people
The Trump administration’s parting blows
There is an ignoble history of outgoing administrations making things harder for their unwelcome successors – and Trump’s departure was no exception