History
"The right hero" - Douglas Murray reviews Jesse Norman's Burke biography.
Edmund Burke is one of the most difficult thinkers to write about. His philosophy defies easy summary. His career, while noble, was not glittering. Many details that he exhausted himself… Read more
Perilous Question, by Antonia Fraser— review
There are times when a major drama in the House of Commons really does change the course of British history. The period 1974–79, dramatised in the play This House, was… Read more
The Young Titan, by Michael Shelden; Churchill’s First War, by Con Coughlin - review
One evening in 1906, shortly after the election that brought Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberals into power, an understandably nervous Eddie Marsh, a middle-ranking civil servant in the Colonial Office, paid a social… Read more
The Devonshires, by Roy Hattersley - review
Recalling being taken as a teenager on repeated outings to see Chatsworth, Roy Hattersley disarmingly confesses that in those days ‘I was impressed by neither the pictures nor the furniture’.… Read more
How to Read a Graveyard, by Peter Stanford - review
Peter Stanford likes cemeteries. Daily walks with his dog around a London graveyard acclimatised him, while the deaths of his parents set him wondering about customs of mourning and places… Read more
Eleven Days in August, by Matthew Cobb - review
It is fair to assume that Professor Matthew Cobb has often been asked if he is related to Professor Richard Cobb since he begins the acknowledgements of his new book… Read more
Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, by Charles Moore, and Not for Turning, by Robin Harris - review
It is a measure of Lady Thatcher’s standing that her death has been followed not only by the mealy-mouthed compliments from political opponents which are normally forthcoming on such occasions… Read more
What it's like to escape from Colditz
Colditz: Here I am, stuck in the same ventilation shaft that Pat Reid used to escape through just over 70 years ago. It’s a tiny letterbox-shaped hole, about three feet in… Read more
9 March 2013
Gove’s history lessons Sir: ‘The idea that there is a canonical body of knowledge that must be mastered,’ says Professor Jackie Eales, ‘but not questioned, is inconsistent with high standards… Read more
'Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England', by Neil McKenna - review
Mick Jagger, the Danny La Rue of rock, impersonates a woman on the cover of the 1978 Stones album Some Girls. Vaudeville performers in the Jagger mould love to put… Read more
Griff Rhys Jones
I have spent a week with old, old men, interviewing veterans who served with the West African regiments in Burma in the 1940s. It’s for a television programme about my… Read more
2 March 2013
Healing the world Sir: We most warmly commend the courage of Professor Meirion Thomas (‘The next NHS scandal’, 23 February) in lifting the lid on the appalling abuse of the… Read more
Foundling Hospital tokens
‘Dear Sir, I am the unfortunate woman that lies under sentens of Death in Newgatt…’ So begins a letter of 1757 addressed to the powers that be at the Foundling… Read more
What did he see in her?
When King George I came over from Hanover in 1714 to claim the crown he had inherited from his distant cousin Queen Anne, he was accompanied by his mistress of… Read more
Love conquers all
Anyone who has ever written a history book will feel a twinge of envy on reading the preface to Just Send Me Word: We opened up the largest of the… Read more
And thereby hangs a tale
The heart sinks when news breaks that an already distinguished novelist is trying his or her hand at the Irish revolution. The track record is uninspiring. Anthony Trollope lived many… Read more
… while others fade
For Watergate junkies, another raking of the old coals is irresistible. For those underage younger persons who never understood what all the fuss was about, here is the chance to… Read more
Some legends flourish …
Confronted by the dead Athenian heroes of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles gave voice in his funeral oration to an idea that explains better than any other why we are so… Read more
Back to the Dreyfus Affair
Not bad, this life. Now 95, Bernard Lewis, is recognised everywhere as a leading historian of the Middle East.He is the author of 32 books, translated into 29 languages, able… Read more
Forever waging wars
Death by buggery. Death by castration. Even death by being scared to death. Or so we are led to believe for the Plantagenets’ world. They had a lighter side, too:… Read more
Latest blogs
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- Drummer Lee Rigby Douglas Murray
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