‘Totally uncontrollable’: the tragic life of Hollywood’s forgotten Welsh hellraiser, Rachel Roberts
They separated in December 1969, and Roberts went off her rocker. She started to swallow overdoses and was regularly having her stomach pumped. “I want to f—ing…
Insiders reveal the shameful truth about Afghanistan: the war wasn’t ‘doomed’, just bungled
Britain’s armchair generals may have mixed feelings on reading The Ledger, David Kilcullen and Greg Mills’s new book on the West’s botched mission in Afghanistan. On the…
White Debt by Thomas Harding, review: is honest writing about British slavery now sadly impossible?
As uprisings go, it was impressively non-violent, with plantation owners and overseers put in stocks, but otherwise left unharmed. Nonetheless, instead of agreeing to the hoped-for negotiations,…
Feeling the January blues? Seek consolation in these 17 authors who came back from the brink
In anxious and uncertain times, we have all been searching for consolation. “Humankind cannot bear very much reality” as TS Eliot sharply reminded us: we tend to…
If Richard III wasn’t a child-killer, he was just another boring medieval monarch
I can’t make my mind up whether to be irritated or amused by the devotion shown to King Richard III. His sorry claim to fame is that…
In Ralph Vaughan Williams’s 150th year, it’s time to put aside our silly prejudices about him
And that brings us to the point about Vaughan Williams: he was an innovator, an experimenter, a man who absorbed the currents of what was going on…
Rasputin: the truth behind the legend of the ‘mad monk’
Robert K Massie, in his groundbreaking biography Nicholas and Alexandra, suggested that Rasputin was simply a calming presence: “Weaving his tales, filling a darkened room with his…
Titanic: the exhibition, Dock X London review: heart-wrenching stories, shame about the set-up
The most moving things in this exhibition are the tiny, battered, leather boots belonging to four year-old Louise Kink, a third-class passenger on the Titanic. Next door…
What travelling in the Soviet Union was really like
20. Young pioneers With their white shirts and little red kerchiefs, the Young Pioneers were the USSR’s youth movement. It was here that young citizens got their…
Do you live in a big country house? Now all you need is a poet to immortalise it
And what of the poems themselves? Like any big-themed anthology, Hollow Palaces is necessarily a mixed bag of brilliance and dross. Geoffrey Hill’s spirit-of-England sonnet “The Laurel…
Evensong by Richard Morris, review: a moving study of Anglicanism’s battle for postwar survival
Evensong is an apt title for this beautifully written and moving meditation on the history and current state of the Church of England, partly because it names…
Titanic: the exhibition, Dock X review: heart-wrenching stories, shame about the set-up
The most moving things in this exhibition are the tiny, battered, leather boots belonging to four year-old Louise Kink, a third-class passenger on the Titanic. Next door…
The Spectre of War by Jonathan Haslam, review: a book every intelligent person should read
When the movers and shakers of London, Paris or Berlin compared the rather vulgar Führer with Stalin and his works, it was no contest. In 1936, when…
The haphazard Blitz spirit that saved our art from the Luftwaffe
Ever since our empire took a grip on the world, we Brits have prided ourselves on being one up on Johnny Foreigner when it comes to organising…
How the forgotten 1919-21 pogroms established the systematic murders that led to the Holocaust
Waking up from the nightmare of the Great War, many clung to the hope that it would mark a turning point in human history. A terrible lesson…
What if Charles I’s popular sister had replaced him?
One of the “what if?” questions often posed by historians asks what would have happened if Henry, Prince of Wales, had not died in 1612, at the…
The trans aristocrat – and the shameful 1960s legal cover-up
It is typically British that Zoë Playdon’s story of trans experience should be told through the ever-fascinating prism of the British class system. Simply put – does…
Sybil & Cyril by Jenny Uglow review: the unlikely artistic duo who shook up Britain
The dun-coloured product, made from cork and linseed oil on a canvas backing, was cheap and about as workaday as you could get, which fitted Flight’s ideal…
The world’s first sitcom: why you’re still watching Pinwright’s Progress 75 years later
Unfortunately, Alexandra Palace’s studio B was already very cramped. In a room about the size of a tennis court were two sets, two huge cameras mounted on…
The best new biographies to buy for Christmas 2021
Albert and the Whale by Philip Hoare (Fourth Estate, £16.99) was one of many biographies to cut down a big subject by yoking it to another. Hoare…
The best new history books to buy for Christmas 2021
Christmas is the time of year when people are most likely to attend divine service, and Going to Church in Medieval England by Nicholas Orme (Yale, £20),…
How deadly crowd crushes happen – and how to stop them
Characterising a crowd surge as a “stampede” or “panic” is misleading he says in that it implies the audience is in some way to blame. “People don’t…
Greece’s Elgin Marbles ‘swap’ would be a bad deal for Britain
From the Greek perspective this attachment to the marbles is understandably difficult to fathom. There is a wonderful purpose-built gallery in the Acropolis Museum where they could…
Anti-grav underwear and ‘moon towers’: the strange world of ‘extinct’ objects
Yet the arc lamp was a frightening level of illumination for some humans (and animals) compared with gas-lights, which produced a glow equivalent to 16 candles. Such…