Civilisation

When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Austrian writer Peter Handke—infamous for defending the regime of Slobodan Milošević—the world was astonished

Jewish boys who survived the Holocaust recall their time in a charmed Italian villa

Two dramas of gender tension are re-explored for the era of #metoo by the RSC

Schumann’s setting of Faust is an aesthetic and spiritual triumph—and can truly be called heavenly

Leonard Woolf had a logical mind, a lucid style, a rare honesty and a keen eye for cant. He was, after John Maynard Keynes, the most worldly, capable and impressive member of the Bloomsbury Group

Are human rights dependent on “human dignity”—and what does “human dignity” even mean?

It really does not matter what structures are in place to coordinate, direct, and execute strategic military aims; what matters is clarity of responsibility

More than most statesmen of his time, Metternich thought about history and his place in it. He was right to worry: most biographies have depicted him as an essentially reactionary politician—a “coachman” of Europe who was fond of the whip hand

The Windrush Betrayal describes a shameful episode in the history of the Home Office, and in Britain’s treatment of a section of its Caribbean minority, but in its highly selective analysis and extreme conclusions it also contributes to an ideological assault on the proper operation of Britain’s border