In the gilded court of Louis XIV, 17th Century France, manners are everything. Where to sit, how to eat, what to wear – any misstep is costly. No one knows this better than François Vatel, ...

Once artificial intelligence really gets going, how fast can the economy grow? Five per cent a year? Ten per cent? Fifty per cent? Name your number. If you want press coverage, make it a big one.

Writer Douglas Adams, best known for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, used science fiction and satire to warn us about potential dangers in our future, from artificial intelligence to social ...

Harford is smart. Scary smart. So smart he can illuminate, in clear, entertaining English, ideas and forces of mind-boggling complexity The Undercover Economist is a rare specimen: a book on economics ...

Traffic jams, heatwaves and hidden charges: you know they’re coming but somehow they are impossible for the holiday-maker to dodge. This summer, after online comparison shopping, we paid a vast ...

After years of campaigning for votes for women, the Suffragettes emerge at the turn of the 20th Century. Their motto, ‘Deeds Not Words’, heralds the start of more ...

A funny thing happened to me this week. After trusting a dating app to arrange dinner with a suitably vivacious and intelligent lady, I arrived at the restaurant at the appointed time to find that ...

Panic has erupted in the cockpit of AirFrance Flight 447. The pilots are convinced they’ve lost control of the plane. It’s lurching violently. Then, it begins plummeting from the sky at breakneck ...

“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 ...

Adi and Rudi Dassler made sports shoes together – until a feud erupted between them. They set up competing companies, Adidas and Puma, and their bitter rivalry divided the sporting world, their family ...

Cautionary Conversation: Steve Jobs hated his phone so much that he smashed it against a wall. He also referred to mobile carriers as “orifices”. Yet he went on to invent the world’s most popular ...