Nuclear War
Speak softly and carry a big stick
A prudent fear of the unpredictability of war has been the touchstone of realist thinkers
It’s a M.A.D. world in Kubrick’s satire
A drama based around the shaky paradox of deterrence no longer feels like a dusty throwback
A nuclear nothing?
Is Russia’s new nuclear doctrine hot air, or an explosive new factor in world affairs?
The end of the world
Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s best and most important film
Putin, Shute and nukes
How much should we fear nuclear war?
The US must resolve its Ukrainian contradiction
Avoiding dialogue with Russia is reckless folly
Psychoanalysing autocrats
How the West tries to understand its enemies
Lessons from the brink
We should not be complacent about nuclear war
A very British crank
Bertrand Russell is almost too familiar a figure to be worth remembering
Unearthly study of life and death
Yukio Mishima concealed his poignant political commentary in a run-of-the-mill science fiction novel
Most Read
The martyrdom of Young Bob
On ebbing power of the political influencer
Grooming gangs and the truth
We should not give ammunition to deniers of the grooming gangs scandal
Babies need women
Leaving children with only men who are not their parents is foolish and dangerous
Stop ignoring the Islamisation of our democracy
The British state is bending to Islamism, not attempting to defeat it
Why has Keir Starmer been so unpopular?
He was the perfect embodiment of a failing system
The warlords’ insolence
The Americans must stop blaming Europe for their own mistake
Escape to the country
Some tractor-acceptance meditation might help with moving day
The intractable problems pulling modern Britain apart
When does upholding free speech become an act of self-sabotage?
Spectres of folk
Can the gallery embrace unofficial culture?
Sing for victory
The days when recording a novelty single was a pre-tour duty are long gone
An uneasy peace amid the ruins
Four million citizens of Damascus remain uncertain of what the future will bring
Light my fire
A perfect spy requires a spark for his cigarette
Countryside counter-attack
A ban on trail hunting reveals a government more interested in cultural punishment than rural survival
Soft-Play Britain
Britain’s governing class talks of growth and grandeur but focuses on planters and paint schemes
Zack Polanski’s war on carrots
Cheap food is not evidence of exploitation but of competition — something Adam Smith understood long before Zack Polanski
The resistible centrism of Mark Gatiss
Why a centre-left worldview struggles to understand dissent