Are human rights dependent on “human dignity”—and what does “human dignity” even mean?

It really does not matter what structures are in place to coordinate, direct, and execute strategic military aims; what matters is clarity of responsibility

More than most statesmen of his time, Metternich thought about history and his place in it. He was right to worry: most biographies have depicted him as an essentially reactionary politician—a “coachman” of Europe who was fond of the whip hand

Without some kind of internal border—in other words, status-checking by employers, landlords and so on—there would be a huge incentive for people, especially from poorer countries, to arrive and stay permanently but illegally

'It has been said that Louis XIV invented France and Napoleon made it. Like Napoleon 150 years later, Louis found a country in turmoil and determined to turn it into a functional, modern state'

'If Jacob Rees-Mogg is indeed a principled arch-eurosceptic, why did he vote both for and against Theresa May’s EU withdrawal deal? If he is so politically acute, why did his attempt to assassinate the previous party leader fail so miserably?'

'If Susan Sontag had been a man, if she hadn’t had such a pungent, fascinating character, if she hadn’t had a nonstandard sexuality, would her works get her a biography as big as this one? Does she merit it?'

'Margaret Thatcher was a leader they had never wholly accepted; a radical, an outsider, a loner'

'In the US, levels of religiosity are traditionally high. But Americans aren't somehow hard-wired to preserve their faith in a high-tech world. They are just behind the curve'

'William Dalrymple dismantles the inadequacies of prep school history: Britain was a relatively poor, agricultural nation in 1599, while much of India was populous and rich'