Jack Dickens

I am delighted to announce that my chapter on espionage in Central Asia and the Great Game has been published as part of this wonderful collection, ‘Spies in History’. It will be up on @EngelsbergIdeas soon. A big thank you to @_paullay and @forlaget_stolpe for the opportunity.

Robin Holloway’s monumental 'Music’s Odyssey' and Tom Service’s 'A History of the World in 50 Pieces' offer sharply contrasting visions of how the story of western classical music should be told. Writing the history of classical music | @DrBenPoore engelsbergideas.com/reviews/writin…

My piece in @TheCriticMag. If you want to slur today's leaders by slurring Neville Chamberlain, do your homework first. Britain's predicament in the late 1930's was hard, the choices fraught. International relations is not a Boys Own storybook. thecritic.co.uk/questions-for-…

Mired in an open-ended confrontation with the Islamic Republic, President Trump is faced with a painful choice between launching a new forever war or accepting a humiliating defeat. Trump’s unwinnable war | @EldadShavit & Jesse R. Weinberg engelsbergideas.com/notebook/trump…

Arthur Miller’s 'Broken Glass' explores how memories of the Holocaust filter into Jewish American identity. Arthur Miller and the memory of catastrophe | Malcolm Forbes engelsbergideas.com/reviews/arthur…

I wrote for @EngelsbergIdeas on Moll Flanders, the rise of the novel, and the invention of modern English life. engelsbergideas.com/notebook/moll-…

Museums now invite visitors behind the scenes. The result is a new kind of historical sublime: human creativity measured by volume. When museums become storehouses | @timabrahams engelsbergideas.com/notebook/when-…

In his picaresque novel 'Moll Flanders', Daniel Defoe presents experience as the true measure of character. Moll Flanders and the invention of modern life | @dpatrikarakos engelsbergideas.com/notebook/moll-…

Years of political repression and creeping urban decay have hollowed out Istanbul's soul, designing dissent out of its once-vibrant streets and erasing its rich cosmopolitan past from popular memory. My (sad) farewell to the city: engelsbergideas.com/essays/istanbu…

It is half a century since Tom Wolfe coined the phrase the 'Me Decade'. The age of Me is over. The age of Them has begun | @BryanAppleyard engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-a…

🎧Audio essay: Can epic poetry revive History? When combined, as the ancients knew, history and poetry offer an incomparable insight into the human condition. @MichaelAuslin laments the demise of poetry as a form for exploring great moments in history. audioboom.com/posts/8880480-…

Istanbul’s descent into darkness | @hannahluci engelsbergideas.com/essays/istanbu…

The Soviet Union was a society defined by the constant tension between revolutionary promise and everyday hardship. How the Soviet Union lived and died | Caroline Eden (@edentravels) engelsbergideas.com/reviews/how-th…

US grand strategy was once guided by a sound understanding of the importance of chokepoints, a vital aspect of geopolitics that the Trump administration has neglected at its peril. America’s fatal chokepoint | @phil_tinline engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ameri…

The roots of the current conflict between the United States and Iran go back to the origins of the Islamic Republic and the seismic shockwaves it unleashed across the Middle East. Iran and America’s long war | Ibrahim al-Marashi (@ialmarashi) and Tanya Goudsouzian (@tgoudsouzian) engelsbergideas.com/notebook/iran-…

‘Metamorphoses’, the Rijksmuseum’s exhibition of art inspired by the works of Ovid, shows how the Roman poet's epic of change has resonated through the centuries. Ovid’s perpetual motion | @BoydTonkin engelsbergideas.com/reviews/ovids-…

Not one but two of Britain's most spectacular country houses were designed by a playwright with no architectural training. How did it happen? My new essay for @EngelsbergIdeas celebrates the 300th anniversary of the man who built Brideshead: engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-gre…

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The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper is 200 years old this year: here’s my take on the book that helped define a nation - for @EngelsbergIdeas engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-las…

Very much enjoyed this conversation on the past, present and future of liberalism with the ever insightful @adwooldridge. For @EngelsbergIdeas.

Delighted to write about @GeorgianGroup's 300th anniversary celebrations of Sir John Vanbrugh, the excellent new @CSaumarezSmith biography and the @SoaneMuseum exhibition of his drawings.