As Governor of Britannia, Magnus Maximus has a huge army at his disposal, which is just what he needs to secure the Roman imperial throne. But perhaps the impressive general should have looked ...

Marathon day. An early train into London, then an unfamiliar journey across a race-disrupted city from Paddington to Blackheath, all in good time for the start of the race. I was nervous, of ...

I’m speaking at 5×15 at 7pm on Monday 29 June – and at the FT Weekend Festival on Saturday 5 September. In both cases there are some brilliant speakers on stage – come along!

Thomas Midgley’s inventions caused his own death, hastened the deaths of millions of people around the world, and very nearly extinguished all life on land. Midgley and his employers didn’t ...

Brand new submarine HMS Thetis is the pride of the British Navy. In 1939, she sets out for a test dive with 103 men on board. But a tiny flaw in her construction has gone unnoticed, and the crew of ...

Mike Lynch was often lauded as Britain’s answer to Bill Gates. Born into a working-class family, Lynch’s incredible intellect and passion for computers led him to become a billionaire tech ...

Well, it’s been a long road since I raced the dinosaurs at a New Year’s Day parkrun. I’ve managed various niggles (knee, glute, achilles… yawn). I’ve run around the amazing Ladybower Reservoir, across ...

In a column in January about the paradox of work, I recalled the immortal Douglas Adams joke about working conditions: the hours are good, but “most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy”. The joke ...

Claude Shannon was brilliant. He was the Einstein of computer science… only he loved “fritterin’ away” his time building machines to play chess, solve Rubik’s cubes and beat the house at roulette. If ...

“Thanks to Tim Harford’s characteristic wit and magnetic storytelling, you may not realize you’re getting an advanced course in how to understand the kinds of statistics we’re all faced with every day ...

In 1923, legendary navigator Captain Dolly Hunter led a squadron of warships into America’s worst peacetime naval catastrophe. The mission was supposed to be a speed trial, a display of the squadron’s ...