Decade of Burning Archives
I started writing with the name of the Burning Archive in 2015. In this curated guide to my content over that decade, I introduce you to the channels I write on and my personally chosen highlights from each decade.
The Growth of the Burning Archive
This metaphor first appeared in my poem “The Burning Archive.” I wrote this poem in the early 2000s, and it is in my poetry collection Gathering Flowers of the Mind. I published this book in July 2021.
Blog
In 2015 I applied the metaphor to the first blog published in my name. Between 2010 and 2014 I wrote a blog, The Happy Pessimist, under a pseudonym, Antonio Possevino. But I closed it down because I feared the authorities would punish me for publishing my views as a public servant. From 2015 I wrote and published for the first time in my own name, without pseudonyms and without the cone of silence imposed on government officials.
The Burning Archive found a mere handful of readers, but I found my authorial voice.
In 2023 I transitioned my ‘blog writing’ to Substack. You can read the blog online still, but the best way to read the early Burning Archive is in the two books of edited essays from both blogs, supplemented by other writing from this period.
Books
In From the Burning Archive: essays and fragments 2015-2022 I published my writing on history, culture, literature, and the development of my writing voice. I published this book in November 2022, when after 33 years I left government service.
In Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: writing on governing I published my blog posts on politics. This book included writings in government you are unlikely to find anywhere else, and that will give you a rare insight into the complexity of experience within government and the maze of power. I read a 20-minute excerpt as a mini audiobook in this post, “33 years as a bureaucrat” here on Substack.
You can read the first thirty pages of the book in this free sample, a thank you for reading my work.
Podcast
In 2021 I began a podcast in an effort to reach a wider audience than I found through my blog. I produced 150 episodes until I decided to focus in 2024 on Substack and YouTube. Nowadays my voiceovers at Substack are now streamed as podcasts.
My original podcast is still available on Spotify. So too is my updated Substack podcast - as well as being available here.
YouTube Channel
In late 2022 I launched my YouTube channel, after my departure from government. I had posted a few videos earlier, such as voiceover narrations of poems from Gathering Flowers of the Mind. But they received next to no views.
Remarkably enough a few videos took off. An early video on John Darwin’s After Tamerlane did well. A video on the Indian Film RRR did better. A video on Ridley Scott’s Napoleon got me monetised.
The YouTube channel and its relationship to my writing continue to evolve as I find a way for it to work for my writing, rather than me serving the algorith.
I recently restructured my YouTube content into two channels one. The original channel is now focussed on World History and Politics. The World Literature Burning Archive channel focuses on literature and I am migrating all of my Nobel Prize and Slow Read videos to that channel. YouTube likes you to stay in your niche.
Substack
I joined Substack in 2020 soon after it started. I joined, however, as a reader. I only started posting in 2022, and settled on a pattern only in mid 2024. I have written over 250 posts on Substack, and there are some gems in the archive.
In addition to the channels that I control I have written articles for other publications and done guest appearances on shows by other creators on radio and Youtube.
Highlights of the Decade of the Burning Archive
2015
My very first post on The Burning Archive Blog in July 2015 on Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History
“Disenchantment of the World” in October 2015 on Max Weber and modernism as a response to the disenchantment of the world, mourning the loss of cultural, attachments that offer redemption for frailty and failure
“Millennial predictions” in October 2015 reviewed five predictions made by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto at the end of his Millenium: a history of our last thousand years (1995).
2016
“The disappearance of stories from the world” (February 2016)
“Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers” (May 2016)
“Donald Trump and America’s wounded pride” (July 2016) when I predicted you know who would become President
“A list of 21 books that shaped me” (August 2016)
2017
“The unravelling of empires” (January 2017) in which I described empires “adrift in the great historical tides of convergence and divergence”
“13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat” (February 2017) in which I began my series of posts that would six years later be adapted into my book, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: writing on governing
“Sponges, metamorphoses and psyche” (April 2017) in which I took my writing into new waters to discuss Ponge, and Leiris, Blanchot and Derrida; to my surprise, readers liked it.
“Hannah Arendt and remembering thought” (May 2017) - remarkable since I interviews Samantha Rose Hill on Hannah Arendt in 2025 (upcoming)
2018
“Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857” (February 2018) reviewed William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 - a great tragedy whose fallen hero is the culture of the Mughal court.
“Cultural fragmentation and the collapse of authority in Western democracies” (April 2018) discussed an issue that is an abiding theme on this Substack.
The political ghosts of literature (October 2018) wondered whether “the true impossibility of literature is the art of the possible itself?”
2019
“On the renunciation of the political world” (March 2019) marked the beginning of my separation from politics, which had too long darkened my horizon
“Berlin, Vergangenheitsbewältigung and finding freedom in the past” urged readers to view German history, literature and culture through a different lens than the events of 1932-89.
2020
“Emmanuel Todd’s Lineages of Modernity” (February 2020) begins my engagement with this important French historian whose La Défaite de l’Occident was a book of the year in 2024
“The failure of institutions in the pandemic crisis” (August 2020) reflected on how well institutions responded the pandemic that began in early 2020
“Anomie Today and Cultural Decay” (August 2020) reflected on the intertwined personal tragedies and cultural fragmentation of Émile Durkheim.
“The condescension of posterity” (July 2020) paid tribute to historian E.P. Thompson amidst the outbreak of iconoclasm and statue destruction in mid-2020
2021
The Burning Archive podcast began in April, its first episode was called “Introducing a Sense of History”
Soon after, I reflected deeply on the meaning for democracy of the events of the pandemic and reaction to populist challenges to elites in The post-democratic society is here
In May I published my poetry collection Gathering Flowers of the Mind.
In October I did a podcast on Beowulf, which is one of my favourites
I began my tradition on the podcast of covering the Nobel Prize for Literature
2022
From late 2021, reflecting the effort on the podcast, I experimented with a new form for my blog, weekly entries, “Flowers of the Mind” such as this one that praised Marina Tsetvaeva and documented my response to the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine
This became a major focus in the first half of 2022 on my podcast, with a series of special episodes on the situation in Ukraine, until the political climate became too hot
In June, I began a series on the podcast on the history of civilizations based on Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Civilizations
From August, I produced a long series on the History of Russia that I will redo at some point, but it begins with the episode on The Black Legend of Russian History
In November I left 33 years behind the maze of power that I had been lost in for 33 years as a government official
In November, I published From the Burning Archive: essays and fragments 2015-2022, my writing on history, culture, literature, and voice.
In November, my first YouTube video to garner more than a score of views was published, 5 Top History Books for Geopolitics
In November I wrote my first substantial post on Substack, The Symphony of Civilizations (It has received seven views; give it some love)
2023
In February 2023 I began to write my newsletter in a defined format, “Seven Glimpses of the Multipolar World,” and discovered my defining phrase, “Wisdom is to live in tune with the mode of the changing world.” I changed the format in September with this post.
On 22 February 2023 I published my first article in Pearls and Irritations, The West’s Grand Illusions in Ukraine
In May 2023 I published a guide to my first 100 podcasts
In May 2023 I began a series on substack on “The World Crisis” that culminated in September with “The Economic Consequences of the Polycrisis”
In July 2023 I collaborated with Russian with Attitude to publish my article The Singer at the Enigmatic Death of Ivan IV (“the Terrible”)
In July 2023 I published Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: writing on governing, but all my publicity efforts on social media fizzled.
In August 2023 I interviewed the esteemed world historian, Felipe Fernández-Armesto for my podcast and YouTube channel.
In November I interviewed Marie Favereau, author of The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World for the podcast and YouTube and reflected on this discussion in this Substack post.
In December I had my first real hit on YouTube when I video on Ridley Scott’s film, Napoleon went viral for me, as I commented here
This small success came at a crucial time. I had tried to launch an online course business training government writers. It flopped completely. My pivot to a history course was not going well. It gave me hope going into 2024.
2024
In January 2024 I began a new series on Substack, a brief history of the multipolar world that looked at how globalisation has changed over millennia
In February 2024 I began my World History Explorers course on Civilizations, and I will be bringing this course to Angels of History members in 2025
In March 2024 my post on W.G. Sebald’s stories, Essays on the history of destruction, struck a note with readers
In April 2024, I reflected on My island diaspora home after interviews with historians Sophie Loy-Wilson and Warwick Powell on Australia’s tangled Asian histories
In May 2024, I shared my reading of Chōmei, Hōjōki, or how to respond when the world is collapsing, a classic of Japanese literature from the end of the twelfth century that speaks to us still eight hundred years later
In June 2024, I began my 120 days Nobel Literature Prize pilgrimage
In July 2024, I began my seven-part guide to geopolitics and history, Imagine You are a Foreign Minister
In August 2024, I shared my slow mini audiobook reading of Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality that is one of the great essays on how history helps judgement
In September 2024, I wrote on events in West Asia and the many horrors of history, How to face monstrous world events and not turn your heart into stone, and this piece was later adapted to an article, Gazing at the Gorgon in Gaza, for Pearls and Irritations
In October 2025, I completed my Nobel Literature Prize Challenge with the 2024 Prize, set up the Nobel Archive, and completed my Tides of Globalisation series.
In November 2025, I began my series on the post-1945 world
In December 2025, I wrote my most widely read post yet, China never entered the Thucydides Trap that US history invented, which caught the attention of Alex Lo of the South China Morning Post
2025
And in 2025 I announced my program for the year including weekly book recommendations, deep dives and Slow Read program.
In 2025 I also will publish a book of my essays on America including those originally published in Pearls and Irritations and here on Substack. I will link it here once it is out.