In the preface to Pax, the latest volume of his magisterial history of the Roman Empire, Tom Holland notes that the northern bank of the river Tyne was the furthest north that a Roman Emperor ever visited. What was so …
Anarchy ended our imperial dream
It’s 1994 and Robert D. Kaplan is in China’s Xinjiang Province, home to 11 million Turkic Uyghur Muslims whom the world now knows as the Uyghurs. He soon learns they are “trapped in a grip of surveillance and brutal repression …
Has Xi Jinping bankrupted China?
It is hard to tell when a crisis in a dictatorial regime, such as the sudden breakdown of China’s economic model, is not about this or that, but about the regime itself. My own experience in this regard is very …
Forgive my male gaze
Lost in thought again, I pace the humming street with my eyes down. They get into less trouble that way. If the pavements weren’t so cluttered with abandoned rented bicycles and e-scooters, I’d try walking backwards.
I am brooding over …
The arrogance of fighting extremism
In Christopher Rufo’s new book, America’s Cultural Revolution, the conservative writer and professional shit-stirrer argues that a malevolent woke ideology, promoted by misguided Left-wing activists, has taken over America’s core institutions, “effectuating a wholesale moral reversal” under the rule of …
How to go off-grid in Alaska
Who in their right mind would choose to live without a washing machine? To most of us, life without this miraculous modern contraption is a sign of abject poverty and domestic tyranny. A woman who is forced to wash her …
Lucy Letby was an NHS monster
A sense of catharsis seemed to envelop Britain when it was announced that Lucy Letby had been handed a life sentence for her crimes. The appalling 10-month litany of her homicidal activities was over. Evil had been exposed. Justice had …
The West enflamed Haiti’s nightmare
Yesterday, as television and radio sets across Haiti issued warnings about a tropical storm churning across the Caribbean Sea, its residents could be forgiven for wondering what they did to deserve such torment. Already the poorest country in the Western …
Modern Europe was born on the battlefield
Why write about the Hundred Years War? This succession of destructive wars, separated by tense intervals of truce and by dishonest treaties of peace, was one of the seminal events in the history of England and France, as well as …
The cult of CrossFit
What’s the point of physical exercise? What’s the purpose of heaving, puffing and snorting your way around a gym three or four times a week? Personal health, obviously. The opportunity for competition at a demanding level of physical engagement too. …
Does Ukraine need to compromise?
Over the past year and a half, calls for peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have been widely dismissed by the Ukrainian government and its more maximalist online supporters as either Putinist propaganda or defeatism. Yet the so-far lacklustre results …
Trump colluded with the Swamp
In a radio address to the nation, delivered in 1943 as the tide of war was beginning to turn, Franklin Roosevelt surveyed the progress on America’s home front as it churned out materiel at lightning pace: “I saw thousands of …
How abduction panic became big business
Why did Phoebe Copas shoot her Uber driver? The 48-year-old got into a car driven by Daniel Piedra Garcia on June 16 thinking she was heading to El Paso in Texas. But when she saw a sign reading “Juárez, Mexico” …
The snake within the suffragette movement
A gardener and a suffragette meet by chance on a road by the River Thames. He is carrying a flower-pot, and she is on her way to burn down a house. So starts Stella Benson’s satirical debut novel I Pose …
The cruelty of Canada’s euthanasia policy
With uncharacteristic humility, I would concede that a few positions I’ve argued fiercely in print might be viable on paper, but in practice are a disaster. The “war on drugs” being a fiasco, years ago I advocated the legalisation of …