“Authoritarianism, nationalism, centralization, demagogy: surely these are evils from which we may expect to be cured” - Alessandro Passerin D’Entrèves, 1947.

In 1947, Alessandro Passerin D’Entrèves gave his inaugural lecture as Serena Professor of Italian at the University of Oxford. A scholar and Italian resistance fighter, he delivered the lecture less than two years after the end of the second World War. Passerin D’Entrèves saw his appointment as a chance to “cement the bonds of friendship and mutual understanding between England and Italy”.

Nuclear terrorism remains a low probability, high consequence threat. Lack of access and capability will likely continue to inhibit most non-state-sponsored terrorism scenarios; and nuclear forensics, and the risk that a state-sponsor’s identity would be discovered, will likely inhibit proxy attacks. But several developments appear to be changing the nature of the threat. One of these is that non-state groups likely to be motivated to try to use radiological or improvised nuclear devices are changing and growing in number.