Ben Macintyre

Ruthless determination of Israel’s longest-serving PM stems from fighting with the country’s equivalent of the SAS

The Trump administration has put its trust in polygraph tests but the double agent Aldrich Ames, who died last week, passed them numerous times

Israel is culling Iran’s leaders but sometimes removing the big fish merely creates room for more dangerous sharks

George Reynolds was told to abandon his quest for black gold. His determination changed the course of modern history

Joy at the discovery of a lost episode of the comedians’ show reminds us how embedded they were in the British psyche

Discovery of a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal root canal is further proof of the species’ surprisingly sophisticated lives

When societies decide they want women to have more babies, the incentives can be well-meaning or downright cruel

His role as the UK’s spymaster was deadly serious, but whenever we met he would tease me for divulging secrets about a Russian double agent

Plight of a Nepalese cook is a reminder of the divide between climbers and the locals who get them to the summit

Uncertainty about the epic’s authorship — one man, a collective or a lyrical housewife — echoes down the centuries