More than two and a half thousand years ago – so the story goes – King Croesus of Lydia consulted the oracle at Delphi. And the oracle assured him that if he went to war against Persia he would destroy a mighty empire. Reassured, Croesus launched his war, and was...
He’d played with Miles Davis and Art Blakey and this was to be the biggest solo concert of Keith Jarrett's career - but the Virtuoso pianist was in for a shock when he entered Cologne's opera house. The only piano at the venue was a wreck. His musical contemporaries...
Blitzkrieg means "lightning war", but despite the German name it was not a German invention. Back in 1917 a brilliant English officer developed a revolutionary way to use the latest development in military technology - the tank. The British army squandered the idea...
Two of the greatest economists who ever lived, Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes, thought they could predict the future and make a killing on the stock market. Both of them failed to see the Wall Street crash, the greatest financial disaster of the age - and...
A British Lord wanted to build the best airship in the world - and so he had two rival design teams battle it out to win the juicy government contract. Competition is supposed to bring the best out of people, but run in the wrong way it can cause people (and the...
Galileo tried to teach us that when we add more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster, those layers of complexity may eventually be what causes the catastrophe. His basic lesson has been ignored in nuclear power plants, financial markets and at the...
One crisp Berlin morning, in 1906, a small group of soldiers were led on an extraordinary heist by a man they believed to be a captain. So how did an ageing nobody in a fake uniform trick them into taking part in the crime of the century? Some say we humans will obey...
Torrey Canyon was one of the biggest and best ships in the world - nevertheless its captain and crew needlessly steered it towards a deadly reef known as The Seven Stones. This risky manoeuvre seems like utter madness, but the thinking behind it is something we...
Exciting news - I have a new podcast series ready to burst out upon an unsuspecting world. It's called Cautionary Tales - true stories of catastrophe and fiasco, sparkling with top acting talent, with the aim of making you wiser with every word. I'm writing and...