All articles written by Lord Ricketts on PoliticsHome.com

8 min Books & culture

"Breathtaking": Lord Ricketts reviews 'The Bayeux Tapestry' at the British Museum

Take one very precious 70-metre-long tapestry on a 348-mile journey for the chance to travel back nearly a thousand years in time. Some experiences surpass expectations – this show is definitely one of them

16 Jun Foreign affairs

Trump’s Iran war has changed geopolitics – but not in the way that he and Netanyahu had hoped

Wars are much easier to start than to end. That is a hard truth, which a generation of politicians and diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic learned from our wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan.

23 Apr 2025 Defence

Trump’s blitz is failing to deliver instant gratification, but it is changing the world

After 100 days in power, a pattern is emerging in the handling of international affairs in Donald Trump’s second term.

17 Oct 2024 Foreign affairs

Peace in the Middle East looks increasingly out of reach

Sometimes a country suffers a trauma so searing that it changes the risk calculation which underlies any national security strategy.

30 Jan 2024 Foreign affairs

A two-state solution is the only path to peace in the Middle East

Israel had the sympathy of the world after the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas on 7 October. But the longer its assault on Gaza goes on, with the ever-increasing civilian death toll and worsening humanitarian crisis, the greater the risk of wider conflict.

06 Nov 2023 Foreign affairs

Israel should heed lessons from Lebanon

For the last decade, all the energy in Middle East peacemaking has gone into encouraging the negotiation of bilateral agreements between Israel and Arab states.

25 Apr 2022 Foreign affairs

'I confess to a twinge of envy for the French' – Lord Ricketts' Lords Diary

It’s the week after Easter, the House of Lords is in recess, and I am in Paris. As always, I have fallen under its spell. In the April sunshine, the scrubbed Haussmann facades and the fresh leaves of the chestnut trees are straight out of an Impressionist painting.

26 Mar 2021 Brexit

Britain will lose significant access to EU security data due to Brexit deal

The greatest impact on our security comes from losing access to the Schengen information System, for swapping alerts on the movement of criminals and missing persons.

10 Jul 2019 Foreign affairs

We must act on these malicious attacks on civil servants

Following Sir Kim Darroch’s resignation as ambassador to the USA, Lord Ricketts reflects on how this latest act of political sabotage provides further evidence of a growing pattern of ‘malicious’ attacks on senior civil servants