Nigel Jones is a historian and journalist
Anyone for whom a screening of the film The Great Escape is an annual Christmas tradition will know how strong a hold the myth of that escapade holds over the collective British imagination. But a myth is all it is. The old 1960s movie, with its star-studded cast performing stiff upper lip heroics, manages to
The members list of the men-only Garrick Club in London’s West End has remained a closely-guarded secret – until now. King Charles, Richard Moore, the head of MI6, and Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, have been named as members of the club after the Guardian revealed what it called ‘the roll call of (the) British
In Rome today a group of ancient history enthusiasts will drape themselves in togas and re-enact that most infamous act of political murder: the assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March in 44BC. The re-enactors will be able to do their anniversary deed on the actual site of the assassination, now a sunken square
Portugal goes to the polls this weekend for parliamentary elections and it looks likely to become the latest European country in which a populist hard right party shakes up politics. Chega – which means ‘enough’ – was only founded in 2019, yet it is forecast to more than double the 12 seats it won at
Two massive security scandals this weekend have given a shot in the arm to Putin’s war on Ukraine. Yet again they have exposed Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Germany as the West’s weakest link in its ongoing confrontation with Russia. Scandal Number One came when the loose-lipped Chancellor revealed that British and French troops were in Ukraine
Anyone with a smattering of knowledge of Britain’s troubled history in the Middle East will be unsurprised by Lord Cameron’s increasingly pro-Palestinian pronouncements on the Gaza war. Twice in recent days Cameron has called on Israel to ‘pause’ its offensive against Hamas in Gaza, and he says he has personally challenged the Israeli government and
The great ages achieved by King Charles’ mother, the Queen (96), and maternal grandmother, the Queen mother (101), show that the modern British Royal family generally enjoy rude good health. But their royal status and excellent medical care are no guarantee against the illnesses that beset all mortal men and women. In the contemporary era,
It’s not often that an ex-spymaster is spied upon by his former colleagues. But just that has happened in Germany, where Hans-Georg Maassen, the former head of the country’s internal security service, the BfD (equivalent to Britain’s MI5), has been placed on a watch list for official observation as a suspected right-wing extremist. Maassen, who ran
We don’t hear much about Austrian politics in Britain, which is not perhaps surprising since the landlocked Central European republic of some nine million souls, is scarcely a major player on Europe’s chessboard. Nonetheless Austria, like Britain, will hold elections this year, and a populist party with Nazi roots looks certain to emerge with the
George Orwell has a story that when Sir Walter Raleigh published the first volume of his projected history of the world while in prison, he witnessed a brawl outside his rooms in the Bloody Tower which resulted in the death of a workman. Despite diligent enquiries, Raleigh was unable to discover the cause of the
One of the fascinating aspects of the Horizon Post Office scandal is the way that the sub-post masters and mistresses who were victims of the bungling or maybe malevolent Post Office management, are represented as a class. They seem to sum up the qualities that used to be thought of as quintessentially English: honest, respectable,
Nigel Farage’s indecision continues. Despite being hyped in advance as a major unveiling of the rebel party’s programme, Reform UK’s press conference yesterday was something of a damp squib, not least because Farage failed to actually show up. Reform leader Richard Tice said the ex Brexit party leader is ‘still assessing’ the ‘extent of the
Whatever position people take on the long-running dispute over the ownership of the Elgin marbles, there can be little doubt that Rishi Sunak’s last-minute cancellation of a scheduled meeting with visiting Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis over the issue is an unnecessary, foolish and snippy snub to one of Britain’s few friends in Europe. It
When archaeologists digging beneath a Leicester car park in 2012 uncovered the battered skeleton of King Richard III, it made headlines around the world. The discovery was hailed as the most exciting archaeological find since the unearthing of the boy king Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. Now England’s most notorious king is back in the news.
After days of speculation, Nigel Farage has finally confirmed that he has accepted ITV’s invitation to go into the jungle and join Ant and Dec and eleven fellow contestants on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!. It’s a decision he may come to regret. Farage says he has been stoutly resisting offers to appear
Simon Heffer is the supreme Stakhanovite among British writers. Where the original Stakhanov moved 227 tonnes of coal in a single shift, within the past decade Heffer has produced four massive volumes of modern British history, each little less than 1,000 pages. Alongside them he has edited three equally voluminous diaries of the waspish socialite
Ukraine is reported to have rejected a consignment of Germany’s Leopard 1 tanks – on the grounds that they are technically flawed, and that Ukrainian engineers lack the skills and training to fix them. Embarrassingly for Germany, this is the second time that Ukraine has turned its collective nose up at a delivery of German
Like the little boy who pointed out that the emperor was naked, veteran US politician Mitt Romney has just voiced an uncomfortable truth that everyone knows, but few wish to utter: America is being run by men who are too old for office. At 76, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts and presidential contender is
Conservative parties everywhere have traditionally been identified with maintaining law and order and cracking down on crime. As part of his successful campaign to appeal to right-of-centre voters, even Tony Blair before his 1997 election triumph famously vowed to be ‘tough on crime – and tough on the causes of crime’. So, in yet another
Bulgaria is a country that doesn’t often feature on Britain’s radar – beyond being a location for cheap package holidays and even cheaper wine. But the arrest of three Bulgarian citizens who have lived in Britain for a long time and are being charged with spying for Russia may change that. For the country bordering the
