Engelsberg ideas

‘There is no common threat that we have put in writing,’ said Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan when quizzed about his country’s new defence pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Why, then, is the new ‘Mecca Joint Defence Agreement’ agreed between these three Sunni Muslim nations significant? Apart from their conscious invocation of Islamic solidarity in Mecca, the pact st...

Never say that Finns don’t have religion. They have kesä – summer – that sweet, intense, poignantly short season from mid-June to mid-August when, seemingly, all five million Finns close up shop and head upcountry or to one of the myriad islands or archipelagos adjoining the country’s endless coastline. They drink in the long blue days at their mökki...

In the winter of 2014, Ukraine faced a peculiar institutional trap. The Revolution of Dignity had swept away the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych, but left behind its law-enforcement apparatus. Public trust in government agencies had been low even before the protests: in 2013 only 15.5 per cent

Most pitches I now receive are clearly leeched from large language models (LLM). About once a week I come across an article in a magazine, or a newspaper, that clearly depends on artificial intelligence. One of the more subtle clues is the way...

Haydn’s piano sonatas should be better known – and more frequently played than they are – elegant trifles they are not. There are some very good complete surveys of these endlessly satisfying, truly classical works, the best probably being Ronald Brautigam’s, performed on the kind of pianoforte the composer would have been familiar with. But nothing, to my mind, beats the