Byron Rogers, a journalist whose work I always enjoy, has a nice story about some discovery relating perhaps to King Arthur that spawned a conference that caught the attention of the editor of one of our tabloids. A journalist was dispatched to cover it and asked Rogers what it was all about. ...
People often complain about the professionalism of politics today, but the truth is, at the top level, our politicians aren"t half professional enough. They lack staying power, and when they receive a check, they fold. So in Britain an absurd convention now rules; it decrees that defeated prime ...
The Horseman by Tim Pears is one of the best novels I"ve read in a long time. The first part of a projected trilogy, it is set in rural England before the 1914"18 war, and is partly the story of an inarticulate young boy's development, partly an evocation or, better, re-creation of a ...
"The lady's not for turning," famously declared Margaret Thatcher, and to her credit the Old Girl rarely did. Not so the second woman to become prime minister of the still (just) United Kingdom. Theresa May, who poses as a principled politician"vicar's daughter and all that"turns ...
Thinking about Syria, I"ve been rereading The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944"45, Ian Kershaw's brilliant and comprehensive study of the German home front in the last ten months of Hitler's war. It serves to remind one that war has always been terrible for ...
Harry Truman was in the White House and Donald Trump hadn"t yet been conceived when atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman was still there and the Donald had just celebrated his fourth birthday when 75,000 North Korean troops invaded South Korea. The war launched then has ...
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It would have been a surprise if the obituaries of Martin McGuinness, chief of staff of the Provisional IRA and subsequently a key figure in the peace process and then deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, hadn"t been, shall we say, mixed. For some he was a murdering thug, for others a man ...
The Fifth French Republic was the creation of General de Gaulle. Contemptuous of what he called the "regime of the parties," which saw weak governments come and go and the same politicians return to office through a revolving door, he believed that France needed a strong president who stood ...
The combination of Brexit and an imminent second Scottish independence referendum is profoundly depressing. Better to think of other things"food, for example. That offers comfort, even the possibility of jokes that aren"t sour. I find myself fondly remembering a distinguished poet who was ...
The United Kingdom isn"t as old as most people seem to think it is. In its present form it won"t reach its centenary till 2022"assuming it gets there. It was created gradually. England annexed Wales in the Middle Ages and formally made it part of England in Henry VIII's reign. England ...
