Think of Bismarck and you probably think of authority and discipline, hierarchy and order. The name conjures up images of the generously moustached, rather severe looking German leader wearing a "Pickelhaube." Literally meaning "pickle shaped bonnet," this was the helmut donned by the German military in the 19th and early...

If you hadn't noticed, there was a pretty hefty controversy over the burial of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Boston mayor Thomas Menino said he would not allow Tsarnaev's body to be buried in the city. But "burying the dead is a work of mercy" contended Sister Rena Mae...

My first impression of Varanasi - the holiest city in the the Hindu world and one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world - is that someone has fire-hosed the entire place with colour. It's vibrancy here, multiplied.

The city is situated on the banks of the Ganges...

I attended a small dinner recently where a leading figure in international finance regaled guests with dark scenarios of our collective economic future. You can't escape the bad news these days. The Financial Times ran a headline recently, front page above the fold: "Pessimism Deepens Over Global Economy."

A bottom-line...

It was a blood bath: three dead, 176 wounded, 17 in critical condition. In 10 cases physicians have had to amputate limbs. For the victims and their families, Monday was a day of death and devastation. But there's trauma and shock that go further. The Boston bombings were an attack...

The first time I met Margaret Thatcher was in May 1996 in her suite at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. I was part of a group called the New Atlantic Initiative that had invited the Prime Minister, then a half dozen years out of office, to address a large...

I was waiting once for an appointment in the lobby of New York's W Hotel at Lexington and 51st, when along comes someone who provokes a little gawking from the hotel staff and immediate surrounds. I admit, I gawked, too.

It was actor Matt Damon, accompanied by a security...

I suppose it never changes, but there does seem to be plenty of death in the news, much of it looking alarmingly random. It's tragic, and humbling.

An eight-year-old boy has been killed at a U.S. airport by a sign falling on this head. A cabbie in Singapore plunges 9...

Luxembourg's Prime Minster is warning that Europe's demons of war may be coming back. It's a small country, but Jean-Claude Juncker has a big voice. Until January, he was President of the Eurogroup that manages political aspects of the single currency. Juncker is worried about the disintegration of the Euro...

"He couldn't speak, but he said it with his lips ... 'I don't want to die. Please don't let me die', because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country," reports General Jose Ornella, the head of the Venezuelan presidential guard.

Hugo Chavez, the populist and...

Are the arts of any use? Yes, says Grey Gowrie. The ex-culture minister, former chairman of Sotheby's and head of the Arts Council of England made the case as persuasively and eloquently as I've heard in a lecture recently at the Legatum Institute. But more about Lord Gowrie's...

Q. What evil Spirit have you familiarity with?
A. None.
Q. Have you made no contract with the Devil?
A. No.
Q. Why do you hurt these children?

The month of March has not been a very lovely month in human history. Famously, on...

Since the 2008 financial crisis bashing banks, bankers and free enterprise has become de rigeur. A current exhibit at the British Museum tells "stories of mismanagement, speculative frenzy, fraud and failure" in Britain from 1700 to present day. The message is ubiquitous. The captains of finance and industry...

"The humiliation of Akhmed Bilalov, 42," wrote the Guardian, "stamped the president's authority over the 2014 Sochi Games and underlined the importance [Putin] attaches to the global event he hopes will show how far Russia has come since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991."

Russia will play host...

A German business executive in Berlin once told me how, at his company's quarterly press conferences, company spokesmen would try to play down success. If good news was too good, he maintained, there would be negative fall out from media, unions, the churches, politicians and public opinion. Why? It was...

I spent a week in Cairo two years ago. It was early Arab Spring days. The atmosphere was charged. Egyptians were moving almost instantly from feelings of humiliation and rage to a new spirit of dignity and pride.

This was the Facebook revolution. Young people at Tahrir Square had...

We don't know who will emerge victorious in the Czech Presidential election to be decided at the end of the month. Things are neck and neck. But Karel Schwarzenberg, aristocrat and underdog, is clearly the sentimental favourite. That Schwarzenberg is still in the race at all is thanks in part...

A friend of mine studied with the legendary composition teacher, Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger had taught Aaron Copland, Philip Glass and illustrious others and was herself a a remarkable musician. She was the first woman to conduct the BBC Symphony and the New York Philharmonic.

Sitting together at the piano in...

Our wretched gun violence in America continues. Over Christmas, two fire fighters were murdered in New York state in what appears to have been an ambush. This, on the heels of the 26 slaughtered at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a massacre so terrible - with 20 young...

I'm the first to arrive for breakfast with investor Peter Ackerman at Chamomile in Belsize Park. Ackerman, who looks uncannily like Jaws actor Roy Scheider according to the New Republic magazine, bounds into the restaurant. The 66-year-old America hedge fund manager is off a transatlantic flight, popping with electricity. It's early morning...