The academic’s page-turning volume of essays – a study of intellectuals who sought to improve the politics and societies of their day – makes you feel a little more learned than you did before ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Late in this book of biographical essays, David Runciman discusses how Barack Obama took consolation from the ...

David Runciman’s The Handover waves off ideas of killer robots, and argues that states and corporations were the smart machines of their era A bold voice on geopolitics and economics, Sherelle ...

When the Australian cricketers Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were exposed tampering with the ball during last year’s test series in South Africa there was, along with all the faux ...

The speeches American presidents deliver on the day of their inauguration don’t make much of a difference to anything. A handful have given resonant phrases to the language (‘The better angels of our ...

In a hung parliament, should the MPs who hold the balance of power side with the party that came first in the election, or the party that came second? The reason for going with the winners is ...

Here in microcosm is the essence of the Brexit puzzle and the reason it is proving such a nightmare to resolve: are we stuck because we are so divided or are we so divided because we are stuck? The ...

People are living longer than they used to. They are also having fewer children. The evidence of what this combination can do to a society is growing around the world, but some of the most striking ...

“’This is not a time to err on the side of caution,’ Blair said, ‘not a time to weigh the risks to an infinite balance; not a time for the cynicism of the worldly wise who favour playing it long.’ And ...