The culture wars are a magic trick (and you’re the mark)
You’re being played.
Not by your enemies — by the people who taught you who your enemies are.
There’s a reason a magician asks you to watch his right hand: so you’ll never look …
The scheme that bankrupted a nation: Scotland’s Darién disaster
In the summer of 1698, five ships slipped out of the Scottish port of Leith, loaded with wigs, combs, mirrors, and wool blankets. Their destination was a stretch of jungle on the coast of Panama. The …
Sir Idris Elba and the word “woke”
Days after King Charles knighted him at Windsor, Idris Elba sat down with British GQ and slammed a door. A Black James Bond isn’t “realistic,” he said. “James Bond was written how he was written for a …
Was Hitler a socialist? Setting the record straight
There is a persistent claim, often used for political effect, that Adolf Hitler was a socialist. This assertion is provocative by design, but it does not stand up to the fact-based historical record. …
Nakba Day: An unresolved wound
Each year on 15 May, Palestinians around the world pause to mark one of the most defining moments in their history — a day of mourning, remembrance, and renewed calls for justice.
What Is Nakba …
The forgotten fire: A history of the Darfur Genocide
For more than two decades, the people of Darfur have endured mass murder, systematic rape, and the destruction of their homeland. It’s a catastrophe illustrating the world’s repeated failures to …
The rise and fall of the Japanese Empire
For a nation of islands, Japan has always had an uneasy relationship with its horizons. The same sea that protected it for centuries eventually became the highway for its soldiers, traders, and …
The fracturing of the international order in an age of impunity
How tenuous is peace?
The honest answer is: considerably more tenuous than most people in the comfortable West assumed for most of the past several decades.
The post-Cold War era generated an …
The role and limitations of international law in world affairs
What is international law?
International law is, at its simplest, the body of rules and principles that governs relations between sovereign nations. It is not law in the way most people understand …
Mexican culture: A living mosaic of civilisations, faith, and tradition
More than sombreros and mariachi
Mexican culture is one of the richest and most layered cultural identities in the world. Not a single tradition, but a fusion of ancient Indigenous civilisations, …
Did the UK have a Black civil rights movement?
Britain often tells its modern story as one of gradual tolerance, polite reform, and multicultural evolution. Compared to the dramatic confrontations of the American civil rights era, the UK’s …
Nicaragua: From colonisation to independence
Long before the Spanish arrived with their crosses and cannons, the land that would become Nicaragua was a tapestry of peoples, languages, and worlds that bore little resemblance to one another. The …