Book review – History
An invisibility cloak? You might just be able to see it on the horizon...
The best books by good writers — and Philip Ball is a very good writer indeed — are sometimes the…
Doctor Zhivago's long, dark shadow
The banning of Dr Zhivago in the Soviet Union had unfortunate consequences for other fine 20th-century Russian novels, says Robert Chandler
Only tourists think of the Caribbean as a ‘paradise’
A couple of years ago in Jamaica, I met Errol Flynn’s former wife, the screen actress Patrice Wymore. Reportedly a…
The cold, remote plateau of Vichy France where good was done
It is with a heavy heart that I pick up anything to do with the Holocaust. Not because it’s wearisome…
An old soldier sees through the smoke of Waterloo
David Crane on an old soldier’s account of a 200-year-old battle that will never fade away
The Spanish Civil War hotel that Capa, Hemingway and Gelhorn called home
In February 1924 the Hotel Florida, a ten- storey marble-clad building with 200 rooms, a glass-roofed atrium and red plush…
A Labour MP defends the Empire – and only quotes Lenin twice
In a grand history of the British empire — because that is what this book really is — you might…
A Pole’s view of the Czechs. Who cares? You will
When this extraordinary book was about to come out in French four years ago its author was told by his…
From Scylax to the Beatles: the West's lust for India
Peter Parker on the age-old allure of the Indian subcontinent
The Paris of Napoleon III was one big brothel – which is why the future Edward VII loved it
Stephen Clarke lives in Paris and writes book with titles such as 1,000 Years of Annoying the French. Dirty Bertie…
When the English cricket team toured Nazi Germany – and got smashed
Why have the Germans never been any good at cricket? This entertaining account of the MCC’s 1937 tour to the…
Resistance and reprisal
Published to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Vercors, perhaps the most famous stand of the French Resistance…
Baghdad's rise, fall – and rise again
Ali A. Allawi on the fluctuating fortunes of Iraq’s fabled capital
Patrick Leigh Fermor and the long, daft tradition of Brits trying to save Greece
Twenty-odd years ago, while on holiday in the deep Mani at the foot of the Peloponnese, I got into conversation…
Look again – the first world war poets weren't pacifists
The patriotism of the Great War’s finest poets was neither narrow nor triumphalist but reflected an intense devotion to an endangered country and to a way of life worth dying for, says David Crane
What most imperilled country houses in the 20th century was taxes and death duties, not requisition
Servicemen used paintings as dartboards. Schoolchildren dismantled banisters and paneling for firewood. Architects from the Ministry of Works acted like…
From Göring to Hemingway, via Coco Chanel – the dark glamour of the Paris Ritz at war
In Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen did a good job of showing how foolish it is to be obsessed by…
There was good art under Franco
Everyone knows about the Spanish civil war, first battlefield in the struggle that broke out in 1936 and ended nine…
The diary that proves Anthony Seldon wrong about the first world war and the public schools
In March 1915 the 27th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, with an already distinguished political career behind him, took the…
The one-man spy factory who changed history
With two new biographies of Kim Philby out, an espionage drama by Sir David Hare on BBC2, and the recent…
Witnesses in the heart of darkness
When presented with a 639-page doorstopper which includes 82 pages of closely-written sources, notes and index, most of us feel…
‘A dandy aesthete with visions of sacrificial violence’
Eschewing the biblical advertising of ‘the promised land’ or indeed ‘a land of milk and honey’, the Conservative colonial secretary…
Whistling is a bloody nuisance
Paul McCartney says he can remember the exact moment he knew the Beatles had made it. Early one morning, getting…
Can anyone make a good case for the Stuart kings?
Historians have generally not been kind in their assessment of Britain’s first two Stuart kings. Their political skills are regarded…
Queen Victoria with the naughty bits put back
Queen Victoria was the inventor of official royal biography. It was she who commissioned the monumental five-volume life of Prince…
