Today’s news agenda is dominated by discussions about Vladimir Putin’s war and Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s resistance, and the question of whether Joe Biden will keep the western alliance together or Xi Jinping will put pressure on Russia to make peace.

Do individuals matter in shaping the course of events? Henry Kissinger thinks they do, and in his latest book he draws on case studies and his own experience to argue that the individual leader, and his or her statecraft, can sometimes determine history. Of course, it helps if they are surrounded by the best advisers.

Although the ex-president Dwight Eisenhower opposed the author’s appointment as President Nixon’s national security adviser, on the grounds that academics were not fit for high-level decision-making, Kissinger made the transition from Harvard triumphantly. He gained the trust of one of the most insecure and suspicious men ever to sit in the Oval Office and also proved a master of bureaucratic politics, deftly side-lining the State Department and secretary of state William Rogers.