Disraeli

‘Enough to kill any man’: the trials of serving Queen Victoria

23 March 2024 9:00 am

Of all the Queen’s prime ministers, Gladstone suffered the most from her wilfulness, but while he opposed her policies he did much to popularise her monarchy

A broad church under threat

19 December 2020 9:00 am

The future of conservatism depends crucially on its ability to withstand the new hard right, says William Hague

Welcome to the hard centre – and the future of British politics

22 September 2018 9:00 am

The Conservative party has to move beyond Brexit and leaders: what is it going to be about? I suggest it…

Bristol ablaze: anger at the Lords’ rejection of the Second Reform Bill sparked riots in Queen’s Square, Bristol, October 1831 (William James Muller)

Britain über alles

23 September 2017 9:00 am

  David Cannadine was a schoolboy in 1950s Birmingham, which was still recognisable as the city that Joseph Chamberlain had…

Swagger and squalor

16 September 2017 9:00 am

This is a monumental but inevitably selective survey of all that occurred in Britain, for better or worse, in the…

Gladstone silences the Irish press for inciting Fenian violence. Cartoon from Punch, 9 April 1890, by John Tenniel

Cultivating the fourth estate

5 December 2015 9:00 am

Lord Palmerston is remembered today not for his foreign policy nor for his octogenarian philandering, but for his management of…

Banking on wine

18 July 2015 9:00 am

Great matters were trembling in the balance. The prime minister needed cash to achieve his objective and as Parliament was…

Victoria as a child, by Richard Westall

When we were very young

6 June 2015 9:00 am

A wonderfully vivid school story has surfaced written by Queen Victoria as a child. The monarch was clearly a sensational novelist manqué, says Philip Hensher

Ed Miliband could be the first atheist Jewish prime minister from Primrose Hill

19 April 2014 9:00 am

Last weekend, in a small New Jersey suburb, I found myself in a liquor store. Never been anywhere like it.…

Letters

20 July 2013 9:00 am

Wild weather Sir: Weather and climate science is not an emotional or political issue — even though emotions and politics run…