The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
This book has such a level of coherence and insight that it will be read in a single session. Any book that manages to encompass the notion of L. P. Hartley that ‘the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there’; Voltaire’s observation on the execution...
Thomas Waugh, could you introduce yourself? Thomas Waugh is a pseudonym I use for writing modern thrillers. I usually write under my own name for historical fiction. As Thomas Waugh, I have now released four novels, including Gun For Hire, Enough Is Enough and Blood...
Can History Be Saved? Vladimir Putin is not only presiding over a massive invasion of a neighbouring country, he is dictating how Russians should understand past events—not just over Ukraine but long before, ordering huge revisions in what history is taught in schools...
Britain's Destiny The Greek historian Thucydides called his account of the 5th century BC war between Athens and Sparta was ‘a possession for all time’, because ‘the past is an aid to understanding the future.’ Cicero, writing nearly four centuries later, agreed that...
The Bin Laden Papers, by Nelly Lahoud Some years ago a wise Saudi friend implored me to read Amin Malouf’s brilliant The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. Malouf’s use of primary Arab sources cast a corrective and insightful gaze on the Arab defenders, a classic piece of...
With All Quiet on the Western Front having won the BAFTA for best film, it got me thinking as to my top 10 of war films. Now my lists are always subject to change depending on my mood, and whilst I enjoyed AQotWF, it hasn't made the list. Nor have other recent movies...
The word unprecedented has been used a lot lately. During the Covid-19 lockdown last year, my teenage daughter baulked every time a journalist, news anchor, pundit, or politician used that particular adjective. When talking about the period of history following the...
Cities come and go, some destroyed by humanity, others by nature, others simply abandoned. Several decades ago, I happened upon an example of the last kind, in India. The redstone city was deserted, its wide empty paved streets extending into the distance towards the...
Back in the bad old days of the – last – Cold War, NATO held an annual exercise when national leaders and senior military officers war gamed how they would handle a crisis. Called WINTEX, these exercises were constructed within the then tight protocols that governed...
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...
