Britain’s civilised tolerance of Second World War conscientious objectors should make us all proud
Early in the Second World War, pacifist Roy Ridgway was asked by a policeman what he would do if he were approached by a German parachutist. He…
Trapped in Ukraine’s Soviet Disneyland: a ‘Remainer’ in separatist Donetsk speaks out
As a pro-Ukrainian in the pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic, journalist Stanislav Aseyev is not so much a rare beast as an endangered species. When separatist militias seized…
Trapped in Ukraine’s Soviet Disneyland: a ‘Remainer’ in separatist Donetsk speaks out
As a pro-Ukrainian in the pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic, journalist Stanislav Aseyev is not so much a rare beast as an endangered species. When separatist militias seized…
Can you be an artist’s muse without ruining your own career?
She also explains the struggles of being both a mother and an artist. She does not bother to point out the double standards when it comes to…
‘It was only after my mother’s death that I discovered she was a Resistance hero’
By April 1943, Sabine was being warned that the boss in the office where she worked could betray her. On 28 April 1943, she saw a military…
How the Dudleys played Tudor snakes and ladders – and lost spectacularly
A series of high offices followed in rapid succession: military commander of the Scottish borders, high admiral, governor of Boulogne, envoy to the King of France. More…
Is it time to forgive J Bruce Ismay, ‘the Coward of the Titanic’?
What would you have done? The ship is sinking. There’s a place in the last lifeboat, which has begun to be lowered. To remain on deck means…
The ‘Greatest Raid’? Operation Chariot was a cruel and stupid waste of life
Amphibious raiding absorbed a lot of the home-based war effort in the dog days of 1942. It was a peculiarly British practice. In all the time that…
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler review: how to raise a president-killer
“Sic semper tyrannis!” John Wilkes Booth is said to have yelled when he shot Abraham Lincoln in 1865, proof if nothing else that while America’s spirit of…
A quarter of teenagers think Churchill was fictional: we need historians now more than ever
Not that he is ever dull when reaching into the more distant past. Few will forget his description of Edward Gibbon, with his big flapping cheeks, 4ft…
What Britain was really like without its royal family
To historians of a certain age, the years between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 conjure up just…
The Lion House review: this gripping history is Istanbul’s Wolf Hall
The year is 1522 and the court is in crisis. A young ruler wants to assert his authority over his land. A large empire led by a…
Was Pygmalion the first incel?
Even more tellingly, she is not given a name – that was one of the few details I took from other sources. She is only called the…
Cornwallis by Richard Middleton review: can the British general who lost America be rehabilitated?
In the midst of its global struggle with Napoleonic France, Britain lost three imperial heroes within months of one another. Nelson’s death at Trafalgar on October 21…
We all pulled together through Covid – why can’t we the rest of the time?
Speaking (via Zoom, of course) to Her Majesty the Queen at the height of the pandemic, Derek Grieve, a lynchpin of the Scottish vaccination programme, told the…
Fugitives by Danny Orbach, review: the Nazis who became Cold War spies
There were two ways in which the Allies could make use of a senior Nazi in the years following the end of the Second World War. One…
Kate Clanchy: How my memoirs were sullied to suit Twitter’s woke agenda
Perhaps this is a reflection of the sensitivity read’s origins in children’s and young adult fiction. There are good reasons for regulating children’s reading: it is foundational…
My memoirs were sullied to suit Twitter’s woke agenda
Perhaps this is a reflection of the sensitivity read’s origins in children’s and young adult fiction. There are good reasons for regulating children’s reading: it is foundational…
Resistance by Halik Kochanski review: a superb, myth-busting study of Nazi-occupied Europe
Kochanski is excellent on the “painful visibility” of occupying forces, with German troops taking over not just public buildings, but private dwellings, too. A Czech wrote: “You…
From Baghdad to Sandringham in one generation: the Sassoon guide to social climbing
Sir Victor Sassoon, the 3rd baronet and Shanghai real-estate magnate, was a man of wide interests. He was one of racing’s most successful owners, with four Derbies…
Why sanctions and blockades can backfire catastrophically
The implications could be troubling, as Mulder shows. One idealistic young official of the League blithely wrote: “It is the starvation of the general population and in…
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…
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…
Stalin’s Library by Geoffrey Roberts review: an air-brushing of a book-loving monster
If most people were asked to name “a serious intellectual” of the 20th century who also “had a high degree of emotional intelligence”, it might be a…