I think a lot of it is down to looking very, very carefully at the sources and not being blinded by the condary literature or subsequent historical revisionisms. 500 years have passed. What we really need to do is be very purest and then see what the people who were most proximate to the sultan were saying at the time. I find thas i find the discussion really interesting, because if there's a common m tread between gideon's argument and christopher's argument, it is the breakdown of the social contract. And democracy and liberalism and structure of our society has depended for a long, long time abouttethe cohesion of the socialContract.
In The Age of the Strongman, the journalist Gideon Rachman explores how populist and authoritarian leaders have become a central feature of global politics. Since Vladimir Putin took power in Russia at the beginning of the new millennium, self-styled strongmen have emerged across the globe, from Trump and Bolsonaro to Orbán, Xi and Modi. Rachman tells Tom Sutcliffe how these leaders have taken power and the challenge they pose to liberal democracy.
Judy Dempsey is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and editor in chief of the Strategic Europe blog. She explains how Viktor Orbán has tightened his grip on power in Hungary, while the EU has dragged its heels. And how Putin’s war in Ukraine has not only exacerbated pre-existing global divisions but divided Europe as well.
History is littered with powerful leaders, and Christopher de Bellaigue, tells of the rise of one of the most feared – Suleyman the Magnificent. In The Lion House: The Coming of a King the 16th century Ottoman Sultan dominates the lives of those from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna.
Producer: Katy Hickman