She sits there on the cover exuding sex and wealth and a certain knowingness. Mrs Lionel Phillips, who came from a modest background in South Africa, had the good sense to marry one of the ‘Rand Lords’ who made their piles in the new gold and diamond fields. She and her husband bought their way
How curious that such an outsize man, in physique as well as personality, should be remembered today mainly for giving his name to a small fish. For the 19th century, Bismarck was no herring but a leviathan. Between 1862 and 1890 he created Germany, seeing off first the Austrian empire and then France. He dominated
John Buchan’s Greenmantle remains a marvellous read, even if its plot is absurd. John Buchan’s Greenmantle remains a marvellous read, even if its plot is absurd. Who could credit a story about German attempts, headed by the unlovely Kaiser Wilhelm and the glamorous and suitably ruthless Hilda von Einem, to stir up a world-wide Muslim
Miranda Carter certainly has a penchant for awkward, often impossible characters. Her fascinating biography of Anthony Blunt explained, as well as anyone could, that strange mixture of aesthete, snob, revolutionary and traitor. Now she turns to the three monarchs who ruled Russia, Germany and Great Britain at the outbreak of the first world war. Nicholas
The Politics of Official Apologies, by Melissa Nobles George W. Bush, judging by his repeated invocations, thinks that time will eventually prove that he was right. He is not alone in putting his faith in the future. We all call a lot on history these days as the impartial tribunal which will eventually dole out
The Most Noble Adventure contains a striking pair of photographs of the business district in Hamburg. The first, taken in 1945, shows shattered buildings, clouds of smoke and a virtually empty street. Five years later, the same scene is transformed. The damage has largely been repaired and the sidewalks are filled with well-dressed pedestrians. Was
I first read the Raj Quartet in the early 1970s, when Paul Scott’s decision to set his novels in the dying days of the British Raj in India seemed an eccentric choice, almost as though he did not want readers. The British were tired of their imperial past. Who wanted to know the names of