The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

Hello and welcome to a slightly new format for the Spectator's Edition podcast.

We're going to be talking about the magazine, as per usual, but we're going to

try to give a little bit more insight into the thought process behind putting the world's

oldest weekly magazine to bed. I'm William Moore, the Spectator's Features Editor. And I'm

Lara Prendergars, the Spectators Executive Editor.

So, Lara, this week our cover story is about how NATO's preparing to defend itself against

the possibility of a future Russian invasion.

How do we come up with the cover this week?

Well, Max Jeffrey, who is our assistant foreign editors, has recently been up in Estonia

on the border with Russia. He's joined the NATO troops in their preparation for what would happen

if Russia were to invade. So he was alongside British, French, American and Estonian soldiers

as they were rehearsing what the tactics would be.

It's not necessarily the most encouraging piece because what Max points out is that, well, it's quite an old type of fighting, but it's a type of fighting that a lot of these soldiers haven't really done recently, which is fighting in very cold, difficult conditions.

And he says, there's a part where he says that a lot of the equipment isn't working.

The engines aren't starting, guns aren't shooting.

So it's not necessarily the most reassuring piece.

Max has a very good job, I think, of painting a picture of the kind of fears within the military right now of what might happen

and just the kind of preparations that are going on.

And we spoke to Max as well as Mark Galliotti earlier about the piece.

Mark is a historian and a security expert and author of Putin's wars.

Max, could you start by telling us about the drills that you saw earlier last week? So what are they up to?

...