VE Day in Britain in 1945: cheering crowds in the streets, Churchill and the royal family on the balcony
How that same Victory Day was celebrated can be seen in archival photos. After the German Surrender Act was signed the day before, on May 8, 1945,…
The Eagle Has Landed author Henry Patterson – a master of the ‘civilised thriller’
Patterson’s early thrillers, written (under several different names) to supplement his wages as a comprehensive-school teacher and later a university lecturer, had been standard fare. It was…
Winston Churchill had ‘apparent racist views’, according to Westminster Council statue review
Sir Winston Churchill’s “apparent racist views” put his statue at risk during Black Lives Matter protests, according to a Westminster Council dossier. Officials drew up a list…
The ‘Nazi porn’ TV train rolls on – and so does its Churchillian interpretation of history
There is then much debate about whether Chamberlain thought he had bought time by refusing to fight over the Sudetenland, or whether he genuinely thought, in his…
The worst final season since Game of Thrones? How Peaky Blinders fell apart
After six seasons, dozens of slow-motion montages, and more Nick Cave songs than you could shake a red right hand at, Peaky Blinders reaches the end of…
The worst final season since Game of Thrones? How Peaky Blinders fell apart
After six seasons, dozens of slow-motion montages, and more Nick Cave songs than you could shake a red right hand at, Peaky Blinders reaches the end of…
History is packed with clock-fiddling busy-bodies
People who work on Sundays tend to have an equivocal relationship with the arrival of British Summer Time. On the one hand, Welcome, spring! On the other,…
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…
Operation Mincemeat, review: punchy musical about an outlandish Allied subterfuge
A buzz louder than a doodlebug surrounds Operation Mincemeat, a new musical about the wartime deception that enabled the Allied invasion of Sicily. That outlandish subterfuge, which…
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…
Was Neville Chamberlain more than the coward who kowtowed to Hitler?
The man von Hartmann hopes to contact is the other main confected figure in Harris’s story, a young Foreign Office diplomat, Hugh Legat (George Mackay), with whom he had…
The New Yale Book of Quotations, review: from Churchill to Sir Mix-a-Lot
Quotations collections were simpler once: there was Oxford for home consumption, and for a change, Bartlett, closely pursued by Brewer, across the pond. There were others, of…
When Churchill’s granddaughter took him partying with Onassis and Callas
“Not another Churchill book!” groans the weary reader as this slim volume lands with a mini-thump on the desk. Even its author, Churchill’s granddaughter Celia Sandys, has…
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…