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What is the future of the European Union? The EU is sui generis. It certainly cannot be a nation state. Nor is it destined to turn into a Staatsnation or willed nation. Then what? Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: European Union flags. Credit: Brian Lawrence / Alamy Stock Photo 

The current violence and turmoil in the Middle East is expressive of a conflict between rival ideas, between the modern nation state and an old, historical concept of an Islamic caliphate. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Abdel Nasser at a rally after the rupture of relations with Syria. Credit: colaimages / Alamy Stock Photo

Jingoism was a natural offshoot of late Victorian imperialism. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Poster for a British imperial railway company. Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo 

What is a nation, what is its significance, and to what problems of life is its persistence a response? Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Lucas Cranach's The Crossing of the Red Sea, 1530. Credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

The biggest division in modern society is between the meritocracy and the people, the cognitive elite and the masses, the exam-passers and the exam-flunkers. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Caricature of a Cambridge University library in the Georgian era. Credit: Thomas Rowlandson / Alamy Stock Photo

How did our ancestors think? Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: A play is performed in an ancient Greek theatre. Credit: Classic Image / Alamy Stock Photo