History
We have to tell the truth about Tony Benn now. Who will hear it later?
I could start by remarking that we should not speak ill of the dead, quoting the pertinent Latin phrase: de…
Do wars always start in years ending ‘14’?
Years of war Imaginative souls have tried to compared the situation in Ukraine with that which preceded the first world…
When a survivor of Auschwitz asks for your story, what do you say?
What do you feel when a survivor of Auschwitz tells you their story?
Kim Philby got away with it because he was posh
Kim Philby’s treachery escaped detection for so long through the stupidity and snobbery of the old-boy network surrounding him, says Philip Hensher
Niall Ferguson’s diary: Brazil is overtaking us – but it no longer feels like that
São Paolo It was back in 2001 that my good friend Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the acronym ‘Bric’,…
A secret from my African childhood has become a deeper mystery
About 55 years ago, when I was about ten, my younger brother Roger and I discovered a slave pit in…
When Scotland goes, will England return?
Who, my husband asked, expects every man will do his duty? He was responding to the interesting and important question…
How the first world war inspired the EU
To understand the real meaning of the EU, you must grasp that it originated in the first world war, rather than the second
America's war on sleep
The relentless rise of ‘you snooze, you lose’
The two people who brought us The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck (1902–1968), an ardent propagandist for the exploited underdogs of the Great Depression, had barely enough money for subsistence…
The Spectator book review that brought down Macmillan's government
Did Macmillan stitch up his succession – or did Iain Macleod’s famous Spectator piece, 50 years old this week, stitch up Macmillan?
Harry Shearer on bringing out Richard Nixon’s feminine side
Simpsons star Harry Shearer on what it takes to play the president
William Astor: My father, his swimming pool and the Profumo scandal
I was ten when the Profumo affair began at my home, Cliveden. Andrew Lloyd Webber has captured some of the story – but not all
How we lost the seasons
... for tomorrow traditional seasonal rituals may just be ghostly memories of a vanished world, says Melanie McDonagh
To see how good Journey's End is, just look at who it's offended
‘You have no idea,’ wrote the publisher Ralph Hodder-Williams in 1929 to one of his authors, what terrible offence Journey’s…
A book that's inspired by a movie (for a change)
Books become films every day of the week; more rarely does someone feel inspired to write a book after seeing…
Profumo. Chatterley. The Beatles. 1963 was the year old England died
If you’re looking for the year when the old England died, this was it
The wounded Kennedy – and the people who gave him strength
Ten years ago, a determined historian transformed our picture of John F. Kennedy. Robert Dallek had finally got his hands…
The men who demolished Victorian Britain
Anyone with a passing interest in old British buildings must get angry at the horrors inflicted on our town centres…
Look! Shakespeare! Wow! George Eliot! Criminy! Jane Austen!
Among the precursors to this breezy little book are, in form, the likes of The Story of Art, Our Island…
The Briton whose achievement equals that of the Pharaohs'
We constantly need to be reminded that the consequence of war is death. In the case of the first world…
Blonde, beautiful — and desperate to survive in Nazi France
Around 200 Englishwomen lived through the German Occupation of Paris. Nicholas Shakespeare’s aunt Priscilla was one. Men in the street…
Why do the British love cryptic crosswords?
Everyone loves an anniversary and the crossword world — if there is such a thing — has been waiting a…
A place of paranoia, secrecy, corruption, hypocrisy and guilt
‘Is he a good writer? Is he pro-regime?’ an Iranian journalist in London once asked me of Hooman Majd. Majd…
Why do we pounce on Wagner's anti-Semitism, and ignore that of the Russian composers?
Philip Hensher on how an impassioned, chaotic group of amateur 19th-century composers created the first distinctively Russian music
