In the long runDemocracy is future oriented and self correcting: today's problems can be solved, we are told, in tomorrow's elections. But the biggest issues facing the modern world from climate collapse and pandemics to recession and world war each apparently bring us to the edge of the irreversible. What happens to democracy when the future seems no longer open? In this eye opening history of ideas, Jonathan White investigates how politics has long been directed

English politics was high drama

does Britain's future lie with Europe or the wider world

Nadja can't seem to be able to refuse

It's the full state banquet of crazy - and you're most cordially invited

from April to September

The story of how Claire Ratinon found belonging through falling in love with growing plants

he seems to have escaped his former self

and ends at the very centre of London life

Enslaved as concubine - war-wife - to King Agamemnon

A MISSING GIRL

Enter the secret lives of Britain's ordinary garden birds and the brilliant

'Everybody remembers where they were the day they heard that Paddy de Courcy was getting married'