Churchill

Fighting every inch of the way: the Italian Campaign of 1943

30 September 2023 9:00 am

When Allied forces landed at Salerno on 9 September, they expected an easy run to Rome. But the intelligence proved dangerously faulty, as James Holland explains

Are Brits losing sympathy for Ukraine?

31 January 2023 11:07 pm

Britons were keen to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. A month into the war, more than half thought we hadn’t gone far enough.…

Robert Harris on Boris Johnson, cancel culture and rehabilitating Chamberlain

22 January 2022 9:00 am

Nigel Jones talks to the writer Robert Harris about Blair, Johnson and Polanski, cancel culture and his quest to rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain

Can the fiasco of the Dieppe Raid really be excused?

6 November 2021 9:00 am

In my mother’s final days we had a long conversation about the second world war. I asked if she’d ever…

Churchill as villain – but is this a character assassination too far?

14 August 2021 9:00 am

Revisionist biographies of Churchill are nothing new but this one lays the hostility and contempt on with a trowel, says Andrew Roberts

The campus Churchill delusion

27 February 2021 6:15 pm

Was Winston Churchill a racist? For students like me who attended Churchill College, Cambridge, it’s a question which barely even…

Why great speeches are made for stage and screen

10 October 2020 9:00 am

Curious thing, writer’s block. If you believe it exists. Terry Pratchett didn’t. ‘There’s no such thing,’ he said. ‘It was…

Why face masks weren’t compulsory during WW2

15 July 2020 6:42 pm

Britain has been here before when it comes to furores about face masks. Exactly 80 years ago the same argument…

boris

Brexit means Boris

24 May 2019 9:45 pm

A few months before he died in 2007, the famous journalist Bill Deedes asked if I would come to see…

Mount Longdon, Falkland Islands, where members of the 3rd Parachute Regiment died in fighting on 11–12 June 1982

Helen Parr’s intimate portrait of the Parachute Regiment – Our Boys – captures the essence of modern Britain

22 September 2018 9:00 am

On the night of 13 June 1982, Dave Parr was hit by shellfire on Wireless Ridge. He was 19, a…

Turns out life’s not so easy – just look at Ulysses S. Grant

19 May 2018 9:00 am

When Winston Churchill was at the nadir of his career, he wrote a biography of his ancestor, the Duke of…

Why I won’t see The Darkest Hour

20 January 2018 9:00 am

The BBC programme The Coronation, on Sunday evening, was extremely interesting, principally, of course, because of the Queen’s appearance on…

Making musical history: Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of Hamilton

Why has there never been a hit musical about the history of Britain?

11 November 2017 9:00 am

Americans may be able to draw on only 250 years of history, but they’re not shy of making a song…

Guy Burgess

James Klugmann and Guy Burgess: the wasted lives of spies

5 December 2015 9:00 am

Geoff Andrews’s ‘Shadow Man’, James Klugmann, was the talent-spotter, recruiter and mentor of the Cambridge spy ring. From 1962, aged…

The second world war — according to Stalin’s ambassador to London

12 September 2015 9:00 am

Ivan Maisky was the Russian ambassador in London from 1932 to 1943, and his knowledge of London, and affection for…

John Freeman: polymath or psychopath?

15 August 2015 9:00 am

They don’t make Englishmen like the aptly named John Freeman any more. When he died last Christmas just shy of…

Heroically unoriginal: Channel 4’s Humans reviewed

20 June 2015 9:00 am

You’d think scientists might have realised by now that creating a race of super-robots is about as wise as opening…

The subject of immigration has become a means of entrapment

20 June 2015 9:00 am

When I founded the American Conservative 13 years ago — the purpose being to shine a light on the neocon…

RAMC stretcher-bearers from the South Eastern Mounted Brigade enter the Field Ambulance dressing station at Y Ravine. Picture courtesy of Stephen Chambers

The other trenches: the Dardanelles, 100 years on

4 April 2015 9:00 am

Peter Parker discerns classical allusion amid the horror in two books commemorating the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign

Dark thoughts: Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell

Could it be that Wolf Hall is actually the teeniest bit dull?

31 January 2015 9:00 am

In January 1958, the British government began working on the significantly titled Operation Hope Not: its plans for what to…

This diary of a prime minister's wife offers a front-row seat to the Great War

19 July 2014 9:00 am

When Margot Asquith’s name crops up these days, it is usually in a retelling of the story about her meeting…

Robert Harris’s diary: My accidental war with Tony Blair

14 June 2014 8:00 am

To Paris, for the launch of the French edition of my novel about the Dreyfus affair. As we land, I…

Spectator letters: On wind turbines, Churchill's only exam success, and the red-trousered mayor of Bristol

19 April 2014 9:00 am

When the wind blows Sir: Clare Oxford’s piece (‘Gone with the wind turbines’, 12 April) is both timely and sad.…

‘Less political satire than back-handed homage:Charlie Chaplin in a scene from The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin, monster

12 April 2014 9:00 am

No actual birth certificate for Charles Spencer Chaplin has ever been found. The actor himself drew a blank when he…

Hitler didn't start indiscriminate bombings — Churchill did 

26 October 2013 9:00 am

‘I cannot describe to you what a curious note of brutality a bomb has,’ said one woman who lived through…