Second world war
Fascinating exhibitions – clunky editorialising: Breaking the News at the British Library reviewed
In The Spectator office’s toilets there are framed front covers of the events that didn’t happen: Corbyn beats Boris; ‘Here’s…
Mostly gripping – and boasts not one but two Mr Darcys: Operation Mincemeat reviewed
Operation Mincemeat is based on the book by Ben Macintyre, which in turn is based on what Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper…
The moral courage of P.J. O’Rourke
Was it Socrates who said that chaos was the natural state of mankind, and tyranny the usual remedy? Actually it…
Robert Harris on Boris Johnson, cancel culture and rehabilitating Chamberlain
Nigel Jones talks to the writer Robert Harris about Blair, Johnson and Polanski, cancel culture and his quest to rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain
The forgotten story of the pioneering surgeon who healed disfigured airmen
Lloyd Evans on a musical that tells the story of the pioneering maverick whose methods for treating disfigured second world war airmen revolutionised plastic surgery
Can the fiasco of the Dieppe Raid really be excused?
In my mother’s final days we had a long conversation about the second world war. I asked if she’d ever…
Grimy, echt and gripping: Netflix's The Forgotten Battle reviewed
The Forgotten Battle is a Dutch feature film commemorating the desperate and relatively little-known Allied assault on the Scheldt estuary…
I miss life before Big Tech
Do any of you remember the time when everything took place on the terraces and in outdoor cafés? Before everyone…
The art of the pillbox
Laura Gascoigne on the art of pillboxes
Churchill as villain – but is this a character assassination too far?
Revisionist biographies of Churchill are nothing new but this one lays the hostility and contempt on with a trowel, says Andrew Roberts
One for hardcore Tennessee Williams fans only: The Two Character Play reviewed
It can be difficult to remember that Tennessee Williams, the great songster of the Deep South during the 1950s, was…
What really went on at Britain's Bikini Atoll?
Stuart Jeffries takes the ferry to Orford Ness, a strange shingle spit on the Suffolk coast, where art mingles with death
Walking the Somme
Where the 36th (Ulster) Division attacked at 7.30 a.m. on the first morning of the Battle of the Somme in…
Britain is in danger of repeating its post-war mistakes
What we can learn from Britain’s rationing mistakes
The dark history of dance marathons
Stuart Jeffries on the dark history of dance marathons
The sufferings of Okinawa continue today unheard
Okinawa is having a moment. Recently a Telegraph travel destination, to many in the west it’s still unfamiliar except as…
Churchill’s enigma: the real riddle is why he cosied up to Stalin
The real riddle is why he cosied up to Stalin
Lives unlived: Light Perpetual, by Francis Spufford, reviewed
Francis Spufford was already admired as a non-fiction writer when he published his prize-winning first novel, On Golden Hill, in…
Covid, like war, brings less obvious shocks
Domenica Lawson, daughter of Rosa and Dominic, the former editor of this paper, has Down’s syndrome. She is classified as…
The unlikely Schindler who saved my wife’s family
As I gaze at my four children on Christmas morning, clambering on to the bed with their stockings, I will…
The Venus de Marlene
Tanjil Rashid on the legend of Dietrich
The world’s greatest podcast: Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History reviewed
It’s well known that you should never meet your heroes because they will only disappoint you. Less commonly said, but…
Horrifyingly beautiful – but I will never watch it again: Painted Bird review
The Painted Bird opens with a young boy (Jewish) running through a forest and clutching his pet ferret. He is…
Bombs over London: V for Victory, by Lissa Evans, reviewed
Lissa Evans has been single-handedly rescuing the Hampstead novel from its reputation of being preoccupied by pretension and middle-class morality.…
Looking at Barnett Freedman makes me weep at the government's dismal graphics
Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…
