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Geopolitics

Why statecraft and diplomacy matter

This is Paul Lay's second guest newsletter for Reaction. Iain Martin will be back next week.

Paul Lay
Sep 20, 2025
∙ Paid
US President Donald Trump, Britain's King Charles III, Queen Camilla and First Lady Melania Trump arrive for a State Banquet at Windsor Castle (via Alamy/ 3CMTE6K)

Paul Lay is writing the newsletter until Iain Martin is back from holiday next week. Paul is senior editor at Engelsberg Ideas. He is a former editor of History Today, reviews for The Times, the Telegraph and Literary Review, and is the author of Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate (Head of Zeus, 2020), which was shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize.

‘There’s no magic money tree’, posted Martin Abrams, a Green Party councillor in Streatham, South London, in one of many supposedly wry criticisms of the state banquet held for President Trump at Windsor Castle on Wednesday. Yes, it was a lavish affair, the kind of thing the Brits do sublimely well, which clearly impressed and flattered the Donald into behaving himself, mostly.

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