The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Prior to the Cliveden Literary Festival one of its invited speakers, the great Salman Rushdie, suffered an horrific attack in upstate New York. Fortunately, Rushdie is now in recovery, but the brutal assault was a reminder that there are certain authors who really do...
There are two stories that Jeremy Paxman tells in his new book, Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain. The first is the national story, how coal was the driver behind the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire. The country’s hunger for this black rock...
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on Amazon Articles Click on the links below to read the full article [dpdfg_filtergrid custom_query="advanced" use_taxonomy_terms="on" multiple_taxonomies="name_of_author"...
The destruction of Smyrna in 1922, for which we’ve just seen the centenary, was an event that not only shamed the Turkish forces that carried it out, but also the allied navies that looked on as tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children were killed, and...
Scotland had a profound impact on Winston Churchill – practically, politically and personally. Practically, it provided the young Liberal politician with a constituency for almost 15 years, five election victories and a platform from which he could launch his cabinet...
The Huxleys. I like to think of nineteenth-century biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and his twentieth-century zoologist grandson Julian as one very long-lived man. This Huxley lived from 1825–1975. Controversial exponent and explainer of evolution by natural selection,...
The primary lesson of War is that it has shaped human history since the mark of Cain condemned us to endless cycles of conflict and the gods urged champions onto victory from the vantage point of Mount Olympus. The tangled roots of warfare are so densely packed it’s...
In 1936, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra embarked on a controversial tour of Germany. On the morning of 10 November, the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham and members of the orchestra arrived at the Leipzig Gewandhaus to lay a wreath at the base of a statue of the...
The Queen & the Crown In 1937, librettist Christopher Hassall published a poem entitled ‘The Princesses’. His subjects were the two daughters of Britain’s new king, George VI, Elizabeth - the future Elizabeth II - and Margaret Rose. The poem celebrated the royal...
Agatha Christie's Greatest Mystery At shortly after 9.30 p.m. on Friday 3 December 1926, Agatha Christie got up from her armchair and climbed the stairs of her Berkshire home. She kissed her sleeping daughter Rosalind, aged seven, good- night and made her way back...
