History
How liberal and egalitarian was nineteenth century France?
Professor Jeremy Black talks to Graham Stewart about the conflicts and continuities of France from Louis Philippe to the Belle Epoque
Louis XIV: a monarch of purpose
Despite its length, Philip Mansel’s biography of the Sun King is ‘a welcome prize for any reviewer’
Decaying delights
Tom Chessyre on the glory of obscure railway museums
The broken circle
A remarkable group of intellectuals in pre-war Vienna used philosophy to explain the scientific progess of their time — until they were halted by murder and Nazism
Comfort zone
Hannah Betts chooses chic alternatives to dull sweatpants
History shows that violence is ‘as American as cherry pie’
Violence is intrinsic to America and we shouldn’t expect it to cease being so when Donald Trump leaves office
Despatch from St Moritz
Why are the international super-rich insufficiently grateful to the British?
Surviving the straits of hell
An old press cutting provided the key to a defiant tale of life after Auschwitz
High priestess of a new morality
At times Portrait of a Muse feels like a Julian Fellowes soap opera where we see this woman of extraordinary vivacity making great men go weak at the knees
Learning from the past
Much of Wisdom of the Ancients makes one appreciate how we get sidetracked by so much trivial nonsense
Centre for a vassal state
Why is a think tank dedicated to “Inclusive Trade” trying to tie the UK to EU imports?
Merkel the Disaster
The sad dolts in the room are wrong about the former German chancellor
Do our leaders understand the power grid at all?
It seems as if basic facts are being completely ignored
The downfall of the podcast-industrial complex
How did some of our finest podcasters get the election so wrong?
Portugal and the missing goats
The roots of environmental disasters can be odder than they look
Italy is right to extend its ban on surrogacy
It is good for women and it is good for children
Labour’s timebomb
This one-term Labour government will bequeath a wretched economic mess
Fiddling while Canterbury burns
The new proposals from the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice are depressingly wrongheaded
The predictability of subverting expectations
What to expect when you’re expecting your expectations to be subverted
Plane English
On pyjamas and private jets
When America ignored a slaughter
Whatever America’s flaws, its absence from the global stage leaves a space quickly filled by far more malevolent actors
