Episodes
-
Part statesman, part prophet, Charles de Gaulle knew instinctively that political success and failure are inevitably interlinked, and that history would be the ultimate judge of both. Read by Helen Lloyd.
Image: The President of France Charles de Gaulle marches through the streets under the Arc de Triomphe in 1944. Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Iain Martin is joined by Kwasi Kwarteng, historian and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, to discuss the turbulent life of the 18th-century financial speculator John Law, whose innovative ideas were credited with bringing Ancien Régime France to the brink of ruin. There are echoes of what happened when the Truss government tried its own financial experiment, he acknowledges.
Image: A cartoon of John Law (1671–1729), the Scottish economist who was appointed Controller General of Finances of France under King Louis XV. Credit: PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy Stock Photo -
Missing episodes?
-
Celebrated as predestined shepherd in the glory days of Angela Merkel, Germany in the 2020s is an uncertain giant who has defied expectations, good or bad. Read by Leighton Pugh.
Image: The top of the Reichstag Building. Credit: Artur Bogacki / Alamy Stock Photo -
The leading classicist Daisy Dunn joins EI's Paul Lay to discuss her new book, The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It.
Image: Nikolaos Gyzis, a 19th Century painter, depicts Sappho playing the lyre. Credit: Photo 12 / Alamy Stock Photo -
We cannot afford not to rediscover the fine art, nowadays almost forgotten, of learning from history. Read by Leighton Pugh.
Image: 16th Century engraving by Theodoor Galle, titled The Printing of Books. Credit: The Granger Collection / Alamy Stock Photo -
James Barr profiles the debonair and open-faced diplomat, George McGhee, whose shuttle diplomacy helped accelerate Britain's decline as a player in the Middle East. Read by Sebastian Brown.
Image: President John F. Kennedy (left, in rocking chair) meets the newly-appointed US Ambassador to West Germany, George McGhee. Credit: Gibson Moss / Alamy Stock Photo -
Erica Benner applies ancient wisdom to modern problems in her new book Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power. She shares her insights with EI's Deputy Editor, Alastair Benn.
Image: Gathering of the Areopagus, a deliberative court that met in the open air in ancient Athens. Credit: North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy Stock Photo -
‘Democracy’ is in Sweden built on a basis fundamentally different from the one associated with the development of liberal democracy in the West. Read by Leighton Pugh.
Image: Midsummer Dance by Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860-1920) painted in 1897. A classic of Swedish art history showing traditional folk dancing in the Dalarna countryside in the extended summer evening light. Credit: Universal Art Archive / Alamy Stock Photo -
Dominic Sandbrook profiles Jesse Ventura, the former Navy SEAL and WWE champion who won Minnesota’s governorship in 1999 on an anti-elite ticket. His transition from showbiz to politics was a precursor of the age of Trump – but ’the Body’ was no ordinary populist. Read by Sebastian Brown.
Image: Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura yells to the crowd at his People's Inauguration in Minneapolis. Credit: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo -
What is the future of the European Union? The EU is sui generis. It certainly cannot be a nation state. Nor is it destined to turn into a Staatsnation or willed nation. Then what? Read by Leighton Pugh.
Image: European Union flags. Credit: Brian Lawrence / Alamy Stock Photo -
EI's Paul Lay and Alastair Benn ask: do we really live in an age of upheaval?
Image: Turner's Vesuvius in Eruption. Credit: Artefact / Alamy Stock Photo -
The current violence and turmoil in the Middle East is expressive of a conflict between rival ideas, between the modern nation state and an old, historical concept of an Islamic caliphate. Read by Leighton Pugh.
Image: Abdel Nasser at a rally after the rupture of relations with Syria. Credit: colaimages / Alamy Stock Photo -
Jingoism was a natural offshoot of late Victorian imperialism. Read by Leighton Pugh.
Image: Poster for a British imperial railway company. Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo -
A small but riveting exhibition at London's National Gallery tells the dramatic story of the troubled Renaissance master's 'last' painting.
Image: The Martyrdom of St Ursula, 1610. Credit: incamerastock / Alamy Stock Photo -
What is a nation, what is its significance, and to what problems of life is its persistence a response? Read by Leighton Pugh.
Image: Lucas Cranach's The Crossing of the Red Sea, 1530. Credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo -
The biggest division in modern society is between the meritocracy and the people, the cognitive elite and the masses, the exam-passers and the exam-flunkers. Read by Leighton Pugh.
Image: Caricature of a Cambridge University library in the Georgian era. Credit: Thomas Rowlandson / Alamy Stock Photo - Show more