Increasingly digital environments in which we hop from one window, notification, app or task to the other, our brains always on the lookout for its next dopamine fix, may be leaving us struggling to find focus. Part of the problem is that we are used to being constantly connected to our devices, writes Teresa Rossignoli Palomeque of the Universidad Nebrija. Thankfully, as she explains here, there are ways to regain control – and finish that summer reading list.

France is struggling to keep pace with political surprises that are more reminiscent of the county’s volatile past. In four days, the country’s citizens will weigh in on the first round of the snap parliamentary elections that could result in a far-right government. Writing from England, Andrew Smith muses over the paradox between President Emmanuel Macron’s references to historian Mark Bloch during World War Two commemorations and his reproduction of some of the very errors about which Bloch warned. Could Macron be pushing France toward a ‘strange defeat’?