Nero, Stalin and Bin Laden were all fans, but what makes verse so appealing to these leaders? Benjamin Ramm explores the connection between ruthlessness and sentimentality. Poetry is an art of ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Sentimentality has long been denounced — and feared. Charles Dickens’s novels, showing the plight of the poor, ...

The central thesis of Ferdinand Mount's 'Soft' is compelling: Sentimentality is a form of mass soft power that steers us towards a better, more humane world Ferdinand Mount argues there have been ...