US History
-
This piece appeared in the Sunday Times on 21 June, 2026 In January 1975, President Gerald Ford began his annual address to Congress with a disconcertingly honest line: “The state of our Union is not good.” Traumatised by the rolling crises of Watergate and Vietnam and by the violence and soul-searching of the civil rights…
-
I wrote the following piece for the January 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine. On the fourth of March, 1801, in the city of Washington — then just a half-built, muddy encampment on the banks of the Potomac – a living Head of State peacefully gave up power and a new one took over. The…
Adam Smith: Historian 