‘An excessive amount of slaughter’: what The Longest Day got right – and wrong – about Normandy
The battle on Omaha – multiple efforts along four-and-a-half miles of beach, further mythologised by Saving Private Ryan – now seems amusingly simplified by The Longest Day….
Why Egypt offers the perfect escape for 2022
The restaurant staff, and indeed the crew throughout the boat, were also unfailingly excellent – “gracious and kind and most have a twinkle in their eye,” as…
‘She was loving, but snippy’: the real Anne Frank, by her best friend
The Goslar family was first taken to the Westerbork transit camp in the north eastern Netherlands, where they remained for eight months. Hannah’s grandfather died there. The…
How Stalin’s favourite pianist stood up to the Soviet Union
There was something about the horrors of living in Soviet Russia that nurtured a particular kind of artistic genius, ardently spiritual, determined to rise above the moral…
A digital archive can’t match the thrill of holding old letters
Reading University librarians must be doing cartwheels. Stephen Joyce, grandson of James, has bequeathed it his grandfather’s cache of letters. And not just letters, telegrams. Christmas cards,…
The seeds of the Ukraine crisis: in the early 1990s, the direction of Europe hung in the balance
At the same time, a bitter policy battle was brewing in Washington over whether America’s interests were best served by pursuing close co-operation with Moscow, with economic…
Sonnet factories, puzzled censors and Stasi tears: East Germany’s bizarre effort to weaponise poetry
This was, in Becher’s mind, a reaction to Nazi philistinism. (Think of that line often misattributed to Goering: “Whenever I hear the word culture, I unlock the…
How to find the perfect Breton top
One of the many intriguing things about the Breton is that it manages to be both loud and ‘look at how chicly pared-back I am’. Walk into…
Furtwängler wasn’t a Nazi – it’s time to give this great conductor his due
Wilhelm Furtwängler was perhaps the greatest classical conductor of the 20th century, but since his prime coincided with Nazi rule, he was also one of the more controversial….
Why Shakespeare – and Del Boy – gave us the phrases that live longest
So it seems wrong to think that once upon a time we scattered our speech with noble phrases from the Bible and Shakespeare, but now can only…
The case against cultural repatriation
The West has taken a very strange and unfortunate turn in recent years. Instead of seeking meaningful – even joyous – survival as the leaders of the…
The Betrayal of Anne Frank, review: a stunning piece of historical detective work
On August 4 1944, SS officer Julius Dettman received information that Jews were hiding in a warehouse complex at Prinsengracht 263 in central Amsterdam. The IV B4…
How did we let our history become one long mea culpa?
The West has taken a very strange and unfortunate turn in recent years. Instead of seeking meaningful – even joyous – survival as the leaders of the…
How a British Rail employee ended up in the Old Bailey’s only war crime trial
On February 9 1999, Britain’s first and last war crimes trial began at the Old Bailey in London. In the dock – or, more accurately, beside his…
The BBC: A People’s History, review: a riveting look back on Auntie’s first 100 years
In this, its centenary year, there is sure to be a slew of books, articles, debates and appraisals of the BBC and all it stands for. And…
Hollywood’s Waterloo: where are the great Napoleon films?
Hollywood seems able to make a film about any historical subject imaginable, with one major exception: the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. It almost seems cursed. The latest…
Against the Tide by Roger Scruton, review: a fitting tribute to the Tories’ philosopher king
His longing for “refuge from an alien world” is a recurring theme, yet so too is his unquenchable spirit of adventure. That tension animates his prose, never…
The mystery of Agent 355, America’s first female spy
The legend of “Agent 355” originates in a single passing reference made in a letter written by Abraham Woodhull. Woodhull was one of the leading members of…
The double life of Munich’s ‘good German’ – and would-be Hitler killer – Adam von Trott zu Solz
In 1939, Trott made several trips back to England to lobby British officials and his friends – which included his meeting with the Astors and Chamberlain while…
‘Like a sexy Annunciation’: Alan Hollinghurst on Fragonard’s erotic masterpiece
Not long after I’d first seen the Fragonard Room at the Frick in New York, I was trying to describe the four great canvases of The Progress…
Here’s what happened when our writers used the 1921 census to uncover their family history
How very moving it is to read about my grandparents when they were children. Only one of them survived into my lifetime – what a time-travel miracle…
‘Have I to serve life-long misery for her infidelity?’ 1921 census reveals anger at divorce laws
The newly-released 1921 census, filled out by more than 8.5 million households, has revealed deep public anger at the state of divorce laws in the United Kingdom….
How the 1921 census could be the key to unlocking your family’s secret history
So what stories might his own home be hiding? Unfortunately, there’s no history to trace as yet as it’s a modern house, built about 15 years ago….
Nothing is sacred to the woke statue topplers
Iconoclasm has a long history and it seems to arrive in waves. The Byzantine emperors tried to ban the use of religious images in the eighth and…
Meet the man behind Devon’s Da Vinci Code
If ever you find yourself in rural Devon, somewhere roughly at the midpoint between where Exmoor ends and Dartmoor begins, cleave a path to Coldridge, a tiny…