The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
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...
On Wednesday 14th September, and again for the funeral, we saw the Queen’s Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards form the Bearer Party, in a highly emotive scene as the monarch was carried into Westminster Hall to lie in state, to the sound of Psalm 139 sung by the...
The War on the West by Douglas Murray is not necessarily a history book, but it is one of the most important books that any historian should read this year. Historians (and students of history) are well placed to show that the story of the West is not just a litany of...
Why is it so easy to hate and difficult to love? When societies fracture into warring tribes, we demonise those who oppose us. We tear down our statues, forgetting that what begins with the destruction of statues, often leads to the killing of people. The world is in...
The numbers are grim. Worldwide, nearly five million have contracted Covid-19; nearly 320,000 have died from it. Public health experts caution that those numbers are certainly undercounts. Some deaths are mistakenly attributed to underlying conditions, not...
Peter Hughes, your specialisation in the madness of crowds seems to be the motivating factor in your writing this book – is that right? While the specific issues that stir the madness of crowds, from statues and gender identity to ‘stolen’ elections, may vary, there...
A History of Love & Hate in 21 Statues The furore over statues from both sides of the political spectrum can be alienating. There are often legitimate reasons as to why a statue is problematic. Edward Colston’s had gone through a long-running process of...
Peter Hughes, what first attracted you to statue debate? I was drawn into writing the book on the history of statue destruction out of a preoccupation with the present and the future rather than the past. As a philosopher and a psychologist, I’m interested in...
The Memory of Wounds It has been said that ignorance of history ensures its repetition. This view surely extends the power of knowledge beyond its limits. If history teaches us anything, it’s that knowledge is in thrall to denial, vengeance, hate, love and there...
