250 years of the American experiment

France is in some ways one of Europe’s most conservative societies, and yet revolutionary violence is never far from the surface. Muriel Zagha joins Alastair Benn to discuss this month’s riots and what they mean for next year’s presidential election. Image: ‘Liberty Leading the People’ by Eugene Delacroix (1830). Credit: Alamy

Britain and Germany have shared royal dynasties, forged pragmatic alliances, exchanged huge flows of capital and fought terrible wars against each other. In his new book, ‘Great Powers: A History of Britain and Germany’, Jan Rüger documents that symbiotic relationship’s twists and turns over the past 300 years. Image: An anti-German British propaganda poster from the First World War. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Napoleon appointed a total of 26 Marshals between 1804 and 1815, and they became crucial to his military success. Yet only two of them fought alongside him at the Battle of Waterloo. Andrew Roberts sits down with Paul Lay to discuss his new book, ‘Napoleon and his Marshals’. Image: Napoleon near Borodino, by Vasily Vereshchagin (1897). Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Earlier this week, a Russian drone strike hit the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv, bringing terror to the historic centre of Ukraine’s capital and damaging a symbol of national independence. Paul Josephson speaks to Jack Dickens about why Vladimir Putin is targeting Ukraine’s leading research institutes. Image: The Soviet-era Duga radar near Chernobyl, Ukraine. Credit: Alamy

Earlier this month, the US confirmed for the first time that it had deployed a space weapon in Earth’s orbit. John B. Sheldon and Jack Dickens discuss the fight for extraterrestrial supremacy. Image: A mural of a Soviet-era cosmonaut in Ukraine. Credit: Alamy