Subscribers can read my piece below which appears in The Independent.

You might find it interesting to read alongside this new interview with Kaupo Rosin, head of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service in today’s Telegraph that warns of much the same thing.

Have a great bank holiday weekend if you’re in the UK.

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This morning (Friday) at 1am, President Trump posted a nice visual showing how he sees his predecessors and his own place among the great and the good (and the bad and the ugly).

Trump’s ranking is essentially an updated version of a poll conducted in 1948 when Arthur Schlesinger, a Harvard historian. asked 55 historians and commentators to rank presidents into five categories: Great, Near Great, Average, Below Average and Failure for a feature published by Life magazine.

It was no great surprise to see who sits at the top of the pyramid of those who have led the United States in the 250 years since the Declaration of Independence: one Donald J. Trump.

It was also not huge shock to see who sits at the bottom: low and behold Trump’s immediate predecessors - Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

So far, so predictable.

I am much more interested though in the other rankings and what this tells us about Trump’s view of history.

I’ve no idea where the chart comes from; we all know the President loves social media, memes and visuals (he also posted a picture of himself this morning holding a machine gun, with explosions in the background with the slogan ‘No more Mr Nice Guy)’

Even so, he won’t have made this himself, of course. But the fact he engaged with it shows he liked it. Perhaps he didn’t think too hard about it, saw himself at the top and pressed the button.

But as I’ve not yet seen this posted anywhere else before he put it online, I wonder if it someone in his entourage made it to amuse and flatter him.

If so, it does tell us one or two interesting things about the President and US history.

So in this post, I’ll explain what caught my eye.

The first and strangest point is who is missing from the line-up.

45 individuals have served as US President; but only 34 appear in Trump’s picture.

Among those who have been dropped off the list are arguably the two most important Republican presidents of the 20th century - namely Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.

The most logical explanation for their omission is that they might demand a place too on the leaderboard for Trump to revel in his own glory; so they’ve been dropped.

Likewise George W. Bush and his father George H.W. Bush, who are also both absent. While both have their critics, maybe it was felt too divisive and petty, even for Trump, to rank them ungenerously - although tucking them both into the Average category would surely not have offended even the most die-hard Republican.

There is no place either for JFK, a man whose reputation has taken a bit of a kicking from historians in recent years, but one who is still a darling of the US post-war golden age. Trump has been keen to align himself with Kennedy, not least by carving his own name in stone alongside at the Kennedy Center. What Trump thinks of Kennedy’s presidency though is unclear because of the latter’s absence on the image.

Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford are missing too. Not many would grumble about the latter three being ranked Below Average.

Harry Truman might be harder to score, depending on one’s view of the last months for the Second World War, the start of the Cold War, the missed opportunities with China and the Korean War.

I was surprised, though, to see Calvin Coolidge as ‘Below Average’, given his preference for small government - which would sit naturally alongside Trump’s views.

But it is the inclusion of two the ‘greats’ that took me by surprise.

It would be difficult to design a president less obviously Trumpian than FDR - who vastly expanded the federal government’s role in economic life. If I’d had to bet on which American policy Trump would choose to torpedo if he had to, I’d have chosen the New Deal - which created agencies, regulations, public works programmes and social insurance on a scale that transformed the relationship between Washington and the citizen: the modern Republican movement in the US has spent decades defining itself partly in opposition to that settlement.

I’m mystified too by Woodrow Wilson being classed as ‘great’. Wilson was a key architect of the League of Nations, a president who saw the US role as spreading democracy abroad and creating an international order underwritten by American power - hardly Trump hallmarks.

He was also an avowed white supremacist, resegregating parts of the federal government and defending segregation as beneficial. Notoriously, he hosted a White House screening of The Birth of a Nation, the notoriously racist film that romanticised the Ku Klux Klan at the White House.

His administration's record on women was scarcely more attractive, with Wilson opposing a federal constitutional amendment for women's suffrage and only reluctantly endorsing it.

Critics might sneer at Trump’s views on race and gender and think this is precisely why he would elevate Wilson to such a high rank.

I don’t this so - and Trump himself seems to have had second thoughts.

He obviously had a sleepless night, posting on social media at 4am EST an image of ‘US Territories’ that includes the Strait of Hormuz.

Shortly after, he posted a new image of presidents ‘who built America’ - with Trump alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan (previously missing in action) and of course Donald J. Trump.

The picture also shows five who broke it: Obama, Biden and Jimmy Carter - alongside James Buchanan (1857-61) and - lo and behold - Woodrow Wilson, whose sin, according to this picture was “bureaucracy.”

From great to loser - in a matter of hours.

The obvious answer, of course, is that Trump doesn’t care too much about history. So when he promotes or relegates a predecessor it says little about a deep engagement with the past.

There is though a takeaway here: he is thinking about his own role in history. He is desperate to be ranked in the pantheon, and posts like these are designed to show that.

As any historian knows, therefore, his thoughts have been turning to his legacy - hence Lake America and more.

I’ve a couple of ideas about what might be coming in the next six months in terms of signature moves that he thinks - rightly or wrongly - will earn his place alongside the greats. Do keep following, as you’ll hear it here first.

On that and other things, more soon.

I was all ready to write something about the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its legacies (which we will discuss on our Legacy podcast soon) - till I was alerted to unusual aircraft movement this morning out of Riga.

A US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III, callsign RCH4555, was descending into Vnukovo airport in the Russian capital after flying from Latvia.

The plane had originated from around Washington DC.

The appearance of an American military transport in the Russian capital would be noteworthy any time. In the middle of the war in Ukraine, it is very strange indeed.

So this post is about the extraordinary situation that is currently unrolling - with particular focus on the passenger(s) aboard and on the choice of aircraft.

According US news outlets, the plane was carrying John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, who has come to Moscow for undisclosed meetings.

Neither the CIA nor the Kremlin has said whom he is meeting or what is being discussed, nor had either trailed that talks were about to take place.

This is the first visit to Russia by an American intelligence chief since William Burns travelled to Moscow in November 2021, three months before Russia invaded Ukraine. While high-level meetings between security chief are not unusual, they are not exactly regular affairs either - hence the chatter and speculation online.

But almost as interesting as the passenger is the choice plane.

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I don’t mean the eclipse - which I more or less missed in Northumbria, thanks to clouds and being a little too far north to enjoy the spectacle - but a little closer to earth.

This post is about the new space race - not to the Moon or Mars, but to control the communications networks rapidly filling the skies above us. I wanted to write about why Russia’s attempt to catch up with the US and China tells us a great deal about who is winning, who is falling behind - and why it matters.

On Wednesday, another Space X Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California carrying another 24 more Starlink satellites. That took the number of Starlinks in orbit past 11,000 - pretty amazing given the first first operational satellites were launched only seven years ago.

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The destruction of sources is therefore a serious matter. It often accompanies moments of political transition, turmoil or worse - during revolutions, for example, when those on their way out of power seek to conceal the horrors what they have done or the crimes they have committed, and want to make it harder for their successors to find out what they have done.

Sometimes, though, documents and data are deliberately destroyed for other reasons: out of spite, embarrassment, ideology, or simply because those responsible do not want them to survive.

From a historian’s point of view, that comes close to an unforgivable act: destroying evidence does not merely erase part of the past; it makes it harder for anyone in the future to establish what actually happened.

It beggars belief that we’re seeing some systematic efforts to do this at the moment - not in one of the world’s autocracies, but its greatest democracy.

In this post, I’ll explain what has happened, and their value.

Last year, the administration of Donald Trump set about dismantling USAID.

One of the consequences has been the disposal of 25 years worth of reports. It has emerged that almost 5,000 of there were deleted from the Development Experience Clearinghouse, USAID’s vast and decidedly unglamorous repository of evaluations, audits and other documents.

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Western Europe has just recorded its hottest June and July on record, with a new intense heatwave pushing temperature towards 40C in the UK today.

Wildfires have swept across southern and central Europe, with several countries suffering their worst year for burnt land in decades. A couple of weeks ago, there were fears that cities like Bordeaux and Madrid might be evacuated - or worse.

When I wrote The Earth Transformed, I warned about rising global temperatures, about elevated risks forest fires and about Day Zero coming for cities of the near future. It seems we are closer that I had thought.

Today’s post, however, is about a different kind of rising temperature in Europe.

Over the last few days, a series of troubling incidents has uncomfortable questions about whether a concerted campaign of sabotage, espionage and hybrid warfare has begun - and that the scenario that many European security services have been warning about for some years has entered a more dangerous phase.

I won’t ask you to enjoy; but I hope you will find it interesting.

The most worrying episode took place at Leipzig/Halle Airport in eastern Germany last Monday night (3/4 August).

A small FPV (first-person-view) drone appeared inside a restricted area close to Ukrainian Antonov An-124 transport aircraft.

According to reports, the drone was not carrying out surveillance, but was an attack device, armed with a substantial amount of high explosives, linked to a detonator.

Initial reports suggested that one of the nearby Antonov aircraft was loaded with ammunition; German authorities subsequently clarified that the aircraft had recently carried military ammunition from France eastwards via Leipzig, but had returned empty. That might be even be true; any which way, had the device exploded by the aircraft, the results could have been spectacular.

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This morning I went to the Edinburgh fringe to watch Hecuba, a play written by William Stirling and Arwa Omaren, and produced by William and his wife Charlotte Eagar.

It was a spell-binding performance, moving, amusing and devastating. It is one of the most powerful plays I have ever seen. I strongly recommend going to Edinburgh to watch it. If you are anywhere near ‘Auld Reekie’, clear some space in your diary before the end of the month; it is really worth it.

Rather than write about the play myself, I asked Charlotte - a highly distinguished journalist and former war correspondent to write a guest post for Global Threads.

I hope you will enjoy.

And please, please do book tickets for Hecuba at the Gilded Balloon Teviot while they last.

“I was a queen, seated on a throne of gold / All Trojan women bowed before me,

My sons filled the city with pride / And every wind bore songs of festivals to my ear?”

Arwa Omaren intones to the gripped audience at the Edinburgh festival, the opening lines of her hit, Off-West End theatre award-nominated, show, Hecuba: Why Am I In Your Country?

Arwa weaves her own story of what it was like growing up as a Palestinian refugee in Syria - a country where Palestinians still do not have citizenship, despite having been there for the most part since they fled their homeland in 1948, in what Palestinians call the Nakba, the catastrophe – into that of Hecuba, the doomed Queen of Troy.

The music changes, the lights go down and up, and suddenly Arwa is alone, wailing for her. mother, on the Mountain of Death, abandoned by the people smugglers she paid $1500 to bring her from Syrian to Greece. She thought she was going to die.

“Mum! Mum!!!!!!!!

….Why am I calling for my poor Mum? I spent my life trying to get away from her!”

And Arwa gets the first laugh of the show. For unusually, Hecuba combines a harrowing tale of triumph over tragedy, with rich comedy.

I first met Arwa in February 2021 on zoom from the reception desk of the Harley street office where she was working. She was dressed in her dental receptionist uniform, like a sexy nurse in a Carry On Film.

She was about 33 and had been in the UK since arriving as an asylum seeker in 2018. We were running on-line therapeutic drama workshops for refugees, part of our Trojan Women Project, a combined psycho-social support and advocacy drama project for refugees.

Arwa, as a Palestinian Syrian professional actress and refugee, had been recommended to us to help run the workshops – which had become surprisingly popular.

We had over 60 Syrian participants every week, based all over the Middle East and Europe, all of whom were improvising black comedy sketches inspired by war. This project was suggested by a Syrian refugee producer we’d worked with for several years - because a lot of funny stuff happens in wars, although it’s generally rather sick. We’ve worked with Arwa ever since.

Since 2022, Arwa has played Hecuba, the tragic former Queen of Troy, in our yearly Trojans: Why Am I In Your Country? series of drama workshops and performances for refugees and asylum seekers, based on Euripides’ great anti-war tragedy, the Trojan Women.

The participants, almost all of whom have never acted before - with the exception of Arwa and a couple of Ukrainian professional performers who were also part of our permanent team for several years - work their own stories of exile and loss into Euripides’ extraordinarily powerful play, the first play written about refugees.

Arwa’s current show, Hecuba: Why Am I In Your Country? is different, because it’s a one woman show, written by Arwa and my co-producer and husband, the director William Stirling.

Arwa is one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met. And her story has everything a British audience could possibly want – a tale of extraordinary danger and courage, and a dog, a baby, a husband and a happy ending.

Arwa grew up in Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp-turned suburb of Damascus, the daughter of a successful Palestinian property developer. A professional actress, in 2011, she’d just graduated top of her class from Damascus’ leading drama school and signed a TV series contract - as she says in the play, quoting Hecuba, “I was a queen…I was going to be a STARRRR!!!” - when the war started … her burgeoning career was as shattered by Assad’s bombs, as her home town of Yarmouk.

After a year under attack in Yarmouk, she and her family fled to Lebanon. For the following year:

“I went into a deep depression. I stayed in my room.

I didn’t leave it for a year. I just sat there and smoked.”

Only to re-surface and build a film career for herself in Lebanon; she even starred in a BBC radio drama series about refugees – and then, age 30, her biological clock a-tick, she bought a golden retriever puppy: she called him Jacko: “he became the love of my life.”

Six years later, her family were kicked out of Lebanon, when the government decided to deport all Palestinian Syrian refugees. As for Yarmouk: “It was completely destroyed. Our house didn’t exist. We managed to save some furniture from the rubble.”

But that was the least of her problems. The various checkpoints had reduced what had previously been a 15 minute journey to six hours. She was nearly killed by an over-excited solder, firing over her head, but the greatest danger came when one of President Assad of Syria’s security officers started tracking her phone.

“I heard they were arresting actors, torturing them, to find out about other actors and artists who were against the regime….” So Arwa took the terrifying decision to pay a people smuggler $1500 to take her to the UK. She had to leave her family, worse still, she had to leave Jacko…

The smuggler said the journey to Turkey would take four hours… “but all smugglers are liars…” She ended up walking for five weeks through the mountains of Kurdistan, with an ever decreasing group of desperate refugees, led by their Kurdish smuggling gang… caught and sent back every time they tried to cross the Turkish border.

She nearly died; she was abandoned on the ‘Mountain of Death,”, but then the smugglers returned for her… “Smugglers are very careful of their reputations for success! She was nearly raped, she nearly drowned, she was nearly shot, she had to swim rivers, take boats, but finally got to the UK and claimed asylum…

After 9 months, asylum was granted… she was safe. But she didn’t have Jacko… but as Arwa says, “I’d heard that British people love dogs…” so she found a charity called War Paws, who raised £3k to bring Jacko over. Arwa was re-united with the love of her life.

By now, she was working as a waitress and dental receptionist. She joined the Trojan Women project part-time as our drama workshops director…It wasn’t a TV career, but as she said in the first Trojans play she acted in with us in 2022 “I still dream that Martin Scorsese will come into the restaurant and discover me….”

Scorsese didn’t. Even worse, wheels came off Arwa’s life again: in October 2022, her landlord decided to sell the flat as he could not afford the mortgage, and she and Jacko were evicted. As Ealing council refused to rehouse her with her dog, she and Jacko found themselves sleeping on the streets. Being clever, she set up camp on Ealing Council’s door step…. So they could not ignore her.

She ended up in St. Mungo’s homeless shelter. The lowest point in her life. “War happens to everyone, but being homeless happens only to you…”

And then…. into the garden of the homeless shelter walked Jonathan, a nice Brit who had lost his job and his flat during Covid… and they fell in love.

Three years later they are happily married with a baby, Arthur (“A British citizen, the first person in my family to have citizenship for three generations”) a flat in Battersea, and of course Jacko.

Jonathan works for Lambeth Council as an employment officer, helping other people who have suffered like him, and Arwa’s one-woman show, Hecuba: Why Am I In Your Country? about her story, was nominated for an Off-West End theatre award and is now running for a month at the Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh Fringe, supported by Sir Cameron Mackintosh.

As Arwa says, “Hecuba is every refugee. And she could be you.” For all of us, in our safe little island, are in danger of forgetting that when you see a refugee, there, but for a catastrophe, go you.

As for why Arwa chose the Uk as her haven: “I’m an English speaking Actress, I worked for the BBC.” But most of all, her grandfather, in British-run mandate Palestine, had a British passport. We, the British, have left a legacy in the world: football, cricket, the assumption of innocence in legal systems and often democracy… but sometimes our legacy led to tens of thousands of people being driven from their homes. And that is why Arwa and others like her are in our country.

For more information and to support this wonderful work, please visit:

https://www.trojanwomenproject.org/

TO SEE HECUBA: WHY AM I IN YOUR COUNTRY? 5-31^st August Gilded Balloon. Edinburgh Fringe. https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/hecuba-why-am-i-in-your-country

Later this week, you can hear Peter Frankopan talk with Charlotte and William, and of course with Arwa on the Legacy podcast - which you can find from wherever you get your podcasts….

The two papers that caught my eye came out in the last few days and are absolutely fascinating and (yet again) wonderful examples about the advances in the sciences that are fundamental to historians working today.

The first paper appeared in Science last week and was published by a team led by Bruno Romero González. It focuses on smallpox and the implications of its genomic divergences in the strains that proved lethal in the Americas after Europeans arrived after 1492.

Smallpox was one of the greatest killers in human history. As I noted in The Earth Transformed, the pathogen is estimated to have killed 300 million people in the twentieth century alone.

For those who contracted the common variola major form, mortality could reach 30 per cent; many survivors were left scarred, blind - or both. Smallpox is one of the world’s great medical success stories, though, with the disease eradicated following a major international vaccination campaign. The last naturally occurring case was recorded in Somalia in 1977; in 1980 the WHO declared the disease eradicated.

Nowhere was smallpox more devastating than in the Americas. Europeans carried brought a host of diseases with them when they crossed the Altantic to which indigenous populations were immunologically naive.

The result was catastrophic illness, suffering and death - and contributed to one of the steepest demographic collapses anywhere in human history, worse, probably, than during the Black Death (note: please do pick up a copy of my book if you want to know more!)

Smallpox was first documented in the Caribbean in 1518; two years later, it had reached Mexico by 1520; by 1525 it was prevalent in the Andes, spreading amongst the Inca and their subject populations. In the Americas as a whole, the disease is estimated to have killed at least 3–4 million people, and possibly substantially more.

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A former KGB officer, Patrushev succeeded Putin as Director of the FSB in 1999 before serving for sixteen years as Secretary of Russia’s Security Council. Although he no longer holds that post, he remains one of the Kremlin’s most important strategic thinkers, and his public remarks deserve close attention.

One theme in the interview stood out above all others: the sea.

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the continuing pressure on shipping in the Red Sea and the vulnerability of other maritime choke-points have all served timely reminders that sea lanes underpin not only the global economy but the prosperity, security and resilience of individual states as well.

It is little surprise, then, that Britain has spent recent weeks debating the growing strains on the Royal Navy, the exposure of undersea cables and pipelines and the risks facing the maritime networks on which modern economies depend.

Some 80 per cent of world trade by volume and roughly three-quarters by value is transported by sea; food, fuel, manufactured goods, critical minerals and countless other products move across the world’s oceans every day.

When routes are disrupted - whether in the Red Sea, the Black Sea or elsewhere - the consequences are felt far beyond the immediate conflict, with higher prices, longer supply chains and growing geopolitical tensions.

It is therefore worth paying close attention to how thinking is evolving in Russia about the sea - something that is easy to miss given the dominance of the war in Ukraine.

Patrushev’s remarks though are about far more than ships, ports and naval strategy; in fact, they offer one of the clearest windows yet into how the Kremlin believes the next confrontation with the West will be fought, why Russia continues to invest so heavily in maritime power despite the immense costs of the war in Ukraine, and why history, geography and even centuries-old maps have become instruments of state strategy.

What follows is not really about Russia’s navy. It is about how the Kremlin thinks. And that is something worth understanding. I hope you’ll agree it gives much food for thought.

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Over the course of just a few hours, some 50,000 people crossed from Morocco into the small Spanish territory on the North African coast - many swimming around the frontier barriers, others forcing their way through the land border. The arrivals were equivalent to roughly 70 per cent of Ceuta’s normal population.

According to press reports, at least 57 people died, while the Spanish government deployed soldiers and thousands of police officers to restore control.

Government officials said that the surge was the result of trafficking networks that exploited confusion surrounding a recent Supreme Court judgement restricting the immediate return of migrants intercepted at sea: rumours swirled that anyone reaching Ceuta would be allowed to remain, drawing thousands towards the frontier.

The scenes of the border crossing being overwhelmed went viral. They prompted Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez to describe the events as an attack on Spain’s territorial integrity.

Italy suspended the Schengen free movement regime with Spain on Friday, temporarily closing land and sea borders, with Italian FM Antonio Tajani calling this a ‘necessary measure to safeguard the security of our citizens.’

And of course, the video scenes went viral around the world, fuelling anti-migration narratives and - predictably - vast amounts of chatter about Europe being overrun by migrants, foreigners and Africans; gold dust, in other words, for far-right political parties.

Why, though, did so many people cross at once?

In this post, I am going to try to explain.

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It is the Amazon of Russia - the country's largest online retailer and one of the pillars of its consumer economy.

Founded in 2004 by Tatyana Kim, it is used by millions of Russians every day to buy everything from clothing and electronics to medicines, children’s toys and household goods.

Wildberries processes more than 20 million orders a day through its network of warehouses, distribution centres and collection points. It is a behemoth which, together with its principal rival, Ozon, accounts for around 8.5% of GDP and supports around four million jobs.

In a country where sanctions, inflation and the demands of war have reshaped the economy, Wildberries has become one of the few genuine success stories.

That helps explain why Ukraine’s recent campaign against the company has attracted so much attention - and why Kyiv have been targetting Wildberries warehouses.

This post explains that the effects are much more serious than the destruction of inventory - that the real story is what happens when one of Russia's most important commercial platforms comes under sustained attack.

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Yesterday, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement that will reshape the nuclear politics of the Middle East.

The accord, concluded on July 22nd by Chris Wright, America’s energy secretary, and Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, his Saudi counterpart, is a ‘123 agreement’ - that is to say the legal framework required under American law before significant quantities of American nuclear equipment, material or technology can be transferred abroad.

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The story is extraordinary, because it offers a glimpse of where the technology is currently - and where it is heading. It is bone-chilling.

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Today, I’m going to cover a recent interview with another well-placed figure - Nikolai Patrushev.

For those unfamiliar with him, Patrushev is one of the most powerful and influential figures in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He served as a KGB officer and succeeded Putin as Director of the FSB in 1999 - before going on to serve as Secretary of Russia’s Security Council for sixteen years.

Although he stepped down from that role last year, he remains one of the President’s closest advisers and continues to shape strategic thinking at the highest levels of the Kremlin.

Patrushev’s interview is about the current situation; but it is framed almost exclusively in terms of the Second World War, and specifically of Nazism, fascism and totalitarianism.

It is important to read and pay attention to pieces like this; even if you don’t agree with the analysis, or find it not so much far-fetched as surreal, understanding what figures like Patrushev are thinking and saying is crucial to making sense of Russia today and tomorrow.

I hope you’ll find it interesting.

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So this is the first of two posts this week that focus on ideas recently expressed by senior figures in Russia. Together, they paint a revealing picture of the mindset that now dominates much of Moscow’s strategic thinking.

I hope you’ll find them interesting, albeit disconcerting.

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Titled ‘Moving beyond exposure: a globally comparable framework for heat risk assessment in cities’, it offers a new model for assessing and measuring vulnerabilities of cities in a warming world.

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Most disappear in to the gloom; but occasionally, one deserves a closer look - not because it signals an immediate change in Chinese policy, but because it offers a window into how China’s leadership increasingly thinks about the future.

That is the case of new white paper issued by China’s State Council Information Office at the start of last month.

The title - More Just and Equitable Global Governance: China’s Principles, Proposals and Actions - sounds reassuring enough. After all, who could object to a world that is ‘more just’ and ‘more equitable’?

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Instead, the five time champions crashed out of the 2026 World Cup because of... Martin Luther.

Spend any time reading Brazilian social media over the last few days and you’ll find a surprising number of posts arguing that Brazil has abandoned something essential about itself: football has become too serious, too disciplined, too joyless.

The culprit, according to many chatting online, is not the manager or the federation but the rapid growth of evangelical Protestantism, whose values are said to have displaced the carefree, exuberant footballing culture that once defined Brazil.

Here’s how the Institute for Hispano Studies put it.

(As a ‘think tank for the study of Hispanic-Catholic Civilization & Pan-Iberian geopolitics’, the Institute has a horse in this race, so some generous pinches of salt are worth sprinkling liberally).

It certainly sounds plausible: Brazil’s greatest teams seemed to play with smiles on their faces.

There was Pelé, who often spoke about football as happiness. Or Garrincha treated defenders - and sometimes life itself - as a joke.

Or Ronaldinho grinned through matches that looked less like sporting contests than improvised street performances.

Careca, Falcao, Rivaldo, Ronaldo, Eder, Jairzinho - they all came across as players who would be as dangerous off the pitch as on it; and who might need a quick visit to the confessional on a regular basis.

Even Sócrates, physician, intellectual and political activist, embodied a football culture that prized imagination over instruction.

Through the golden years, Brazil teams were synonymous with joy, with parties, with music, with samba. There was an unmistakable sense that football was supposed to be enjoyable.

That image has become almost mythical.

(It’s also wrong - or least it was for the 1990s onwards. Great players, not great teams; and even the finalists of 1998 or the winners in 2002 were pretty dour - coasting on the dreams of previous generations)

Still, today’s Brazil side, say critics, feels different.

It’s more organised, more professional, more athletic - in other words less Brazilian.

No one is reaching for the samba music, for the fireworks or the cold beers.

The online argument is that evangelical Christianity, which has grown dramatically over the past forty years across South America, encourages discipline, restraint and moral seriousness in ways that sit uneasily with the carnival spirit once associated with Brazilian football.

Whether or not that diagnosis is fair is another matter. It is also worth remembering that every generation complains that the next one has lost something precious.

But what fascinates me is that so many of these discussions eventually trace their origins back five hundred years - to an Augustinian monk in Wittenberg.

Martin Luther was a man not short of belief in his own brilliance (as Afua Hirsch and I discuss in two episodes of Legacy a few months ago).

Here’s a link if you fancy listening (and do please sign up to Legacy +!)

So if you’d told him his name would one day be invoked to explain a Brazilian World Cup exit 500 years later, I suspect he would not have been surprised.

Luther was the primary catalyst of what became the Protestant Reformation, challenging papal authority, attacking indulgences and insisting that salvation came through faith alone. His ideas transformed Europe, fractured Christendom and helped trigger more than a century of religious conflict.

He was a giant of history.

He was also astonishingly abrasive, rude and pleased with himself (I strongly recommend the magnificent Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by my colleague and friend Lyndal Roper)

Luther had lots of legacies; but one was that he has long attracted acolytes whose caused imploded. Prussia embraced Luther as a foundational national hero in the nineteenth century when he became a symbol of German unity, discipline and national destiny.

Statues multiplied; anniversaries became patriotic festivals; schoolchildren learned to see him not merely as a religious reformer but as the father of the German nation. That didn’t end too well.

Luther was a big hit too with the Nazis who celebrated Luther as a great German figure for the same reason - and also because his virulently anti-Jewish writings chimed with their own views.

That did not mean Luther was responsible for the rise of Hitler, although it is striking that in the 1930s, the Nazi Party consistently won far stronger electoral support in parts of Germany with Protestant majorities than Catholic ones, while research by historians like Karina Urbach has shown that Germany's Protestant aristocracy played a significant role in smoothing Hitler's path to power.

None of this, of course, proves anything about Brazil’s football team.

For one thing, millions of evangelical Christians in Brazil would reject the caricature that faith somehow extinguishes joy, music or creativity.

Some of Brazil’s greatest contemporary footballers are openly evangelical while remaining wonderfully expressive players. Correlation is not causation.

And of course, footballing success depends on coaching, talent development, demographics, economics and luck far more than theology.

Nor should we romanticise the past.

Pelé’s Brazil side - not least in 1970 - was not all about parties, sex, booze and dancing; they trained ferociously. The idea that previous generations simply turned up, had fun and brushed other teams to one side is a comforting myth.

And of course the strong Lutheran spine of the Norwegian team does not seem to have caused too many problems this time round - not to mention the Germans, who have won the Cup three more times than (broadly Protestant) England.

And yet myths matter.

For one thing, they tell us how societies understand themselves. So my main takeaway is not whether this debate has any substance to it, but that it has ignited discussion in Brazil about identity, national character and history.

Rather than arguing over expected goals or possession statistics, training methods or tactical decisions, they are debating the Reformation, religious culture and the shadows of history.

We historians spend our lives (well, part of them) watching people use the past to make sense of the present. Sometimes they are right.

Sometimes they are wildly wrong. More often, they are doing something much more interesting - namely searching for stories that explain what is happening in the world.

Am I convinced that Brazil were knocked out because of Martin Luther or because of evangelical protestantism?

No.

But I have been tickled by the fact that so many people seem to think the Reformation deserves at least part of the blame.

Sometimes the most revealing thing about a football tournament is not what happens on the pitch, but the histories people tell themselves afterwards.

Thanks for subscribing; if you do enjoy these posts, do please share them - they are fun to do but take a bit of time; so knowing people want to read them makes all the difference.

More soon.

History - and biology and geography - do not favour the Three Lions. On the other hand, that is also why sport is so great: overturning the past and making history is what it’s all about.

The Azteca in Mexico City has hosted some of the greatest World Cup matches in history.

Obviously there’s the Hand of God match - which produced two of the most famous goals in World Cup history in 1986, one notorious, the other a goal of genius.

Then there’s the 1970 Final, when Pelé’s Brazil won the World Cup for the third time in four tournaments with a sumptuous 4-1 win against Italy.

Or the 1986 Final, another classic, when Diego Maradona’s side beat West Germany 3-2.

The Azteca is an incredible stadium, especially following its recent upgrade.

It’s nickname is a reference to the Aztec (or Mexica) heritage of the Valley of Mexico. But it also hints to the rich history of ball sports of the pre-Columbian peoples of Central America.

(I’ve been working on a academic paper on Mesoamerican trade routes after writing about these in The Earth Transformed - and got very interested in ballgames played in the cities and towns of this region in antiquity to the arrival of Europeans in the 1500s.

Here’s a ball from the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.

There were lots of versions of this ballgame across Mesoamerica - and many names because it was played by dozens of different peoples over more than 300 years.

The Aztecs called it ōllamaliztli, which literally means ‘the playing of the rubber ball’ (from the Nahuatl word ōlli, meaning ‘rubber’).

The Maya called it pitz, from the verb meaning ‘to play ball’, a term that appears in many inscriptions as well as in the Popol Vuh.

Read more

First is a weekend treat.

My friend Jonathan Wilson is one of the world’s leading sports writers. You don’t need to take my word for it - he has been honoured and garlanded and won pretty much every prize there is for journalism and books about football. His most recent book is this gem about the World Cup that came out in May; it has already won the Sports Book of the Year Award 2026.

’s substack, Wilson’s world (of football), is a treat - and recommend to anyone who loves the beautiful game.

JW knows I love my music, so I suggested a Round of 16 playlist for Wilson’s World.

Here it is for you lucky subscribers too - I’ve added a link to Spotify at the bottom too.

Hope you enjoy.

Two cracking matches today - as well as Wimbledon, the Women’s World Cup cricket T20 Final, the British Grand Prix. So hope you’ll enjoy some of these tunes while having a day off (if you’re lucky enough to have one today)

Run To You – Bryan Adams

I’m holding a couple of floor fillers back just in case the Canadians surprise us all and get into the business end of the World Cup. The lyrics, of course, are every coach’s dream.

Ghazali – Saad Lamjarred

Saad is massive in North Africa and beyond; and this is one of my favourite bangers: a bit like the Atlas Lions too – dazzling, passionate and full of joy.

Mis Noches Sin Ti – Los 3 Paraguayos

This classic would be perfect for slow-mo footage of the Paraguay team – whether they win in the last 16 or lose. Plus it’s a great tune.

Contact – Brigitte Bardot

A lot to choose from here; but I’d go for a throwback to the 1960s and a golden age of French culture rather than football. And who better than St Tropez’s finest to showcase French swagger.

Living in America – James Brown

The hardest-working man in show business would have made a great defensive midfielder. And it’s a great track for Independence Day celebrations.

Pump Up the Jam – Technotronic

The best piece of music to come out of Belgium in a thousand years. Full stop.

Sobe, sobe, balão sobe – Manuela Bravo

I’m still sulking from Portugal’s win over Croatia and the disallowed equaliser. So I’m not explaining why I like this tune.

Macarena – Los Del Rio

Love it or hate it. Most people can’t help themselves. Not as sophisticated as thedazzling Spain team; but you can’t have everything in life.

Ponta de Lança Africano – Jorge Ben Jor

I’ve got a bottomless pit of Brazilian disco music that might come out later in the tournament. But this song, about a fictional centre forward of African descent is one of my all-time favourites.

Hunting High and Low – a-ha

Could have been written for Erling Haaland – and sums up what he’ll be doing against Brazil. Everyone loves the A-ha front man Morten Harket; but I’m also a big fan of his brother Håkon Harket – who is a brilliant historian.

Cien aňos – Pedro Infante

I love the Mexican classics and they don’t come bigger than Pedro Infante. Mexico has hosted the World Cup twice and now becomes the first nation to host it three times. A song called One Hundred Years feels like the perfect soundtrack to a country whose football story stretches across generations.

A Hard Day’s Night – The Beatles

A nod to the 1am kick off (UK time). If England win, I’m not expecting there to be much rush hour traffic on Monday morning whether Harry Kane’s boys win or lose.

W. Nuss vo Bümpliz – Patent Ochsner

I love the Swiss – understated; good at getting stuff done, and not showy. I suspect not many people who listen to this will play it too many times; it says a lot about the Swiss mentality that I don’t think I’ve ever been to Switzerland without hearing it.

Todo lo Buena Tarde – Alcolyrikoz

Colombia is my dark horse in this tournament - they’ve still got a few surprises left in them. I spent some time in Medellín last year where everyone was football mad. Its home to Alcolyrikoz; this tune sets the tone

Esperanza – Diego Torres

Torres is like Maradona and Messi in Argentina – practically royalty. Most of the country is breathing a sigh of relief after the narrow squeaky win over minnows Cabo Verde. A bit of DT will calm a few nerves

El Youm El Helw Dah – Ahmed Saad & AFROJACK

A banger to end all bangers. I defy anyone to listen to this and then not cheer for the Pharaohs. One of my top five tracks of the last few years.

And here - a link to all of these bangers: