CHF 2024: Day 4

Ukraine: Rhetoric & Reality: Francis Dearnley, David Knowles, Hanna Shelest, Dominic Nicholls

The formidable team from the Telegraph’s Ukraine podcast attracted one of the biggest turnouts as they tackled the gap between rhetoric and reality in the tow years since the invasion. Nicholls and team have several scoops under their belts, including the first confirmation by Ukraine intelligence that they were using US-supplied intel early on in the campaign. The characters in this drama, Zelensky, Boris and Putin feature prominently in this first draft of history, Putin’s nuclear sabre rattling, Boris’s Churchillian hawkishness, and Zelensky’s bravery refusing US offers of evacuation at the start of the invasion.

The Future of the Tank, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, Richard Shirreff John Buckley & Dominic Nicholls

Fighting on a battlefield in which you cannot hide (from cheap drones) set the tone for a proper discussion by tank commanders about the future of the tank. When people were losing their minds to acid house, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon’s rave was inside his tank, and he made a strong case for having lots more main battle tanks in addition to technology. ‘Mass’ tanks in other words. We may need them sooner than we think.

A History of Iran, Ali Ansari

Ali Ansari reckons history is the queen of humanities and his account of modern Iran looks back beyond the Islamic revolution to the 1906 constitutional revolution. The problem was that despite lots of good ideas the modern Iranian state lacked any ability to implement any of it, with no effective state bureaucracy. Iranians go to the polls this week, with a predicably stitched up field of candidates, as the country faces an ecological disaster and is running out of water.

Justin Doherty is Editor at Large at Aspects of History. Head to the CHF site here where tickets are available.