The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World

The BBC’s influence has declined, and Britannia no longer rules the airwaves, but its output is still listened to and watched around the world. Many of the UK’s former print-based media groups such as the Economist, the Guardian and the Daily Mail now have global audiences, with the latter two gaining a huge following in…

The American humorist David Sedaris has quipped that Greeks ‘invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day’. It’s a little harsh given that over the next 2,000 years the Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, British and Russians worked tirelessly to prevent Greece from taking charge of its own destiny and getting…

Four-fifths of the Hellenic Republic is mountainous, characterized by jagged peaks and spectacular deep gorges.

The Aegean is therefore crucial to Greek security, but also to Turkey, NATO, the Americans and the Russians. The Aegean’s largest island is Crete, which is Greek. It is also where we find the Dodecanese islands, including Rhodes, just off the coast of Turkey. Their location is why the sea is sometimes called a ‘Greek…

Modern Athens is the capital of a country that includes more than 6,000 islands. Nowhere in Greece is more than 100 kilometres from water. Greece is at the south-eastern tip of the Balkans; to its north are borders with Albania, Macedonia and Bulgaria and to its north-east is the border with Turkey. This totals 1,180…

The discovery of undersea gas fields has merged old and new conflicts with Greece and Turkey at their heart, and numerous countries being dragged in.

The UK’s higher-education system continues to attract some of the brightest and best (and richest) students. Britain is home to three of the world’s top-ten-ranked universities – Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London.

Britain sits off the coast of Europe, watching carefully and assessing options. It is not in its interest to see the Union disintegrate. A strong EU helps to maintain a prosperous market for UK goods and stability on the Continent.

Sea power underpinned an empire based on the usual power-building common to all countries, but also the racist assumptions of colonialism. There was, however, one bright point of moral light in the navy’s role. In 1807, having played a prominent role in the slave trade, Britain outlawed it. For the next few decades the…