After a severe fire had damaged various public buildings in Nicomedia, part of modern Turkey, the region’s governor, Pliny the Younger, asked the emperor, Trajan, for permission to set up a fire brigade.

Philip Roth is still with us, against the odds. He died in 2018, aged 85, eight years after the publication of his final novel, Nemesis. He went out as he had lived and written, under perpetual storm clouds.

Ours is the era of Everybody’s Autobiography, and 2026 will not disappoint with a bonanza of memoirs by politicians, actors and rock celebrities. Mostly they amount to solipsistic spouting.

Ours is the era of Everybody’s Autobiography, and 2026 will not disappoint with a bonanza of memoirs by politicians, actors and rock celebrities. Mostly they amount to solipsistic spouting.

I recently wrote a book countenancing the idea that the United States could buy Greenland, and I have received some very interesting responses. Some are perplexed at the utility of an Australian assessment of Greenland geostrategy (I’m from Canberra); others have admonished me personally for ‘willing into reality’ US ownership of Greenland.

Donald Trump is playing hemispheric monopoly. Depending on what day of the week it is, the President’s focus alternates between Venezuela, Canada, the Panama canal – and for the last twelve months or so, Greenland.

It’s been 25 years since I started working for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an American nonprofit dedicated to preserving and promoting human rights on the internet. I’ve found myself in dozens of countries working with activists, politicians and civil servants to untangle the complex technical questions raised by the internet, and every one of our discussions ended in the same place.

When, in the early 1950s, Birds Eye tested a new frozen fish product for the British market, the cod fish finger was only ever intended as a bland control option. The experiment’s star prototype was the “Herring Savoury” – a breaded herring fillet, marketed with the slogan “No bones, no waste, no smell, no fuss”.

From every point of view, the present circumstances of Europe’s leading powers seem grave. This is true of the business outlook, politics, security threats and – though it is better placed than many – the region’s preparedness for the coming technological transformations.

My father, a playwright, says that his choice of profession can be parsed as humbly as considering the impulse of a child to showboat on a bicycle screaming, “Look at me!” towards a distracted mother.