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What drives Vladimir Putin?
Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine uncannily reflect the motivations of one of Russian literature’s most famous antiheroes, Dostoevsky's Rod…
1 year, 2 months ago
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, rocket man
The Russian recluse, a scientific self-starter who left school at 14, developed pioneering theories of space travel that anticipated the great feats …
1 year, 2 months ago
Liberty in the shadow of Bonaparte
Benjamin Constant’s considered response not only to the mass murder inflicted by the French Revolution, but to the attempt to reduce the whole French…
1 year, 2 months ago
The case for Classics
Is the study of Latin in peril? And what does the future hold for the ancient inheritance? EI's Alastair Benn is joined by Daisy Dunn, classicist and…
1 year, 2 months ago
How 1970s California created the modern world
What happened in California in the 1970s played an outsized role in creating the world we live in today – both in the United States and in large part…
1 year, 2 months ago
Guittone d’Arezzo, Dante’s forgotten muse
At a time of moral and political crisis, the medieval poet pioneered a daring and emotive vernacular style which inspired generations of Italian lite…
1 year, 2 months ago
The writer's right to speak freely
While we may think we have moved beyond the censorship of the past, writers' artistic freedoms are still constrained. Read by Helen Lloyd.
Engelsberg …
1 year, 3 months ago
Fredrik Logevall on the Vietnam War
EI's Angus Reilly discusses the history and legacy of the Vietnam War with Fredrik Logevall, author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the M…
1 year, 3 months ago
The price of freedom
The arc of history only bends towards justice when people of goodwill grab hold of it and wrench it in the direction of justice. Read by Helen Lloyd.…
1 year, 3 months ago
EI Portraits — Paul Lay on Thomas Gage, a man of unintended consequences
His intense faith led Thomas Gage to switch his religious allegiance during the tumultuous 17th century - he went on to have an enormous impact on Br…
1 year, 3 months ago