• May 9 2026
  Life & Arts

  Trump, Xi and the bid for a ‘grand bargain’ between superpowers

  As the US president prepares to visit Beijing, America no longer holds all the cards — but China knows it must tread carefully

  
• May 2 2026
  Life & Arts

  Why markets are surging in spite of war

  Even amid a supply shock, tech stocks continue to drive indices higher. Is the optimism justified?

  
• April 25 2026
  Life & Arts

  There’s no such thing as the petrodollar

  War on Iran is changing the currency calculations of Gulf energy exporters. But the dollar’s global role depends on far more than the denomination of a barrel of oil

  
• April 18 2026
  Life & Arts

  The coming global food crisis

  Hunger and even famine are foreseeable consequences of the war on Iran. Now the world must act to shield the poorest from effects that will continue long after the fighting stops

  
• April 11 2026
  Life & Arts

  The market failure beneath the manosphere

  Confronting the misogyny and get-rich-quick schemes of influencers means talking openly to young men about success

  
• April 4 2026
  Life & Arts

  Refuge or reality? Olivia Laing on gardening in the permacrisis

  Planting, pruning, digging and tending can feel like an escape. But they are also a way of engaging with the world

  
• March 28 2026
  Life & Arts

  The decapitation dilemma

  Long regarded as dishonourable or counterproductive, the idea of targeting enemy leaders is becoming normalised. What do we lose along with the taboo?

  
• March 21 2026
  Life & Arts

  Is Britain ready for US-style religious politics?

  Fuelled by new funding and transatlantic links, Christian groups are playing an increasingly prominent role on the UK right

  
• March 14 2026
  Life & Arts

  International law is in retreat. We cannot let it die

  Even defenders of the rules are speaking of them in the past tense. But they remain indispensable, argues historian Margaret MacMillan

  
• March 7 2026
  Middle East war

  Trump’s war on Iran is spreading. Where does it stop?

  US allies in the Arab world have been plunged into a conflict they neither wanted nor consented to. Historian Eugene Rogan on what it means for the Middle East

  
• February 28 2026
  Life & Arts

  Did Britain need to strike the Chagos deal?

  Viewed by some as a strategic necessity, the agreement has been complicated by shifting US priorities and political fragmentation at home

  
• February 21 2026
  Life & Arts

  How tech turned against women

  As AI-generated sexualised images proliferate and app-facilitated abuse spreads, we are sleepwalking into a new age of gender inequality. It is time to regulate properly

  
• February 14 2026
  Life & Arts

  What America forgets about the UN

  The organisation faces a potential rival in Donald Trump’s fledgling ‘Board of Peace’. But as a forum for US power, it would be a hard act to follow

  
• February 7 2026
  Life & Arts

  Putin isn’t really winning. Europe needs to make that clear

  Behind Russia’s victory narrative in Ukraine is a system under strain. To fight back, the ‘middle powers’ must work harder on their own story

  
• January 31 2026
  Life & Arts

  Marilynne Robinson: The killings in Minneapolis

  As American cities have been left reeling by ICE federal agents, the acclaimed novelist explores the deeper conflict behind Donald Trump’s show of force

  
• January 24 2026
  Life & Arts

  Greenland, America and the end of Atlanticism

  Behind the crisis caused by Donald Trump’s threats is a much bigger change: the waning of US hegemony and the coming of a multi-polar age

  
• January 17 2026
  Life & Arts

  Iran’s road to revolt

  How isolation, intransigence and desperate economic hardship provoked an upsurge of protest that brought the regime to the brink

  
• January 10 2026
  Life & Arts

  Trump, Venezuela and the doctrine that wouldn’t die

  Long seen as defunct, the Monroe Doctrine is being invoked once again as a blueprint for assertive US foreign policy. Historian Greg Grandin charts the rise, fall and rebirth of an ambiguous creed

  
• January 3 2026
  Life & Arts

  How the bubble bursts

  AI-fuelled market euphoria is a new telling of an old story that will not play out differently this time, writes John Plender — but it may have some way still to go

  
• December 20 2025
  Life & Arts

  Katherine Rundell on the secret history of unicorns

  The ‘Impossible Creatures’ author explains what these magical beasts reveal about human imagination — and why they were once a feature of the nativity

  
• December 13 2025
  Life & Arts

  Could America win the AI race but lose the war?

  The US has gone all-in on artificial intelligence. But the idea of an end-of-times battle with China over tomorrow’s key technology is part delusion, part lobbying tool for Silicon Valley

  
• December 6 2025
  Life & Arts

  Ukraine, Europe and the new economics of war

  By maintaining stability and innovating to hold out against Russia, Kyiv has shown that size matters less in conflict than it used to

  
• November 29 2025
  Life & Arts

  Liberalism can win back the working class. Here’s how

  Nobel-winning economist Daron Acemoglu on Zohran Mamdani’s rise, the problem with cultural politics — and the case for pro-worker AI

  
• November 22 2025
  Life & Arts

  The new politics of autism

  As contentious claims over rising diagnoses get a presidential platform, Simon Baron-Cohen explains where talk of an ‘epidemic’ goes wrong — and why we need more recognition that autism comes in different forms   

  
• November 15 2025
  Life & Arts

  Why is it so difficult to run the BBC?

  As complaints over the editing of a Donald Trump speech topple another director-general, leading the broadcaster is once again looking like an impossible job