First World War

Patriotic Traitor finds dramatic gold in France’s interwar history

12 March 2016 9:00 am

Jonathan Lynn, co-author of Yes Minister, has excavated the history of France during the two world wars and discovered dramatic…

What to do about Syria – the view from 1916

6 February 2016 9:00 am

From ‘The future of Syria’, The Spectator, 5 February 1916: We say with all the emphasis at our command, and…

‘Thinking Germans must be depressed indeed’: The Spectator’s predictions for 2016

2 January 2016 9:00 am

From ‘The Military Situation’, The Spectator, 1 January 1916: The opening of a new year is a time for taking stock…

How pop is Peter Blake?

5 December 2015 9:00 am

Painters and sculptors are highly averse to being labelled. So much so that it seems fairly certain that, if asked,…

Towering will-o’-the-wisp: Agyness Deyn as Chris Guthrie

Sunset Song is close to masterly

5 December 2015 9:00 am

Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song is the best-remembered title of a short career. Born in 1901, he was dead by…

Ian Rankin’s diary: Paris, ignoring Twitter and understanding evil

21 November 2015 9:00 am

After ten days away, I spent last Friday at home alone, catching up on washing, shopping for cat food, answering…

From the archives: the liberty of the battlefield

14 November 2015 9:00 am

From ‘Soldiers for the land’, The Spectator, 13 November 1915: It is certain that, when the war is over, tens of…

The secret brilliance of Prince Philip’s ‘gaffes’

7 November 2015 9:00 am

I’ve just been on the receiving end of a Prince Philip gaffe, of sorts, and I loved it. It was…

From the archives: W.G. Grace’s legacy on the Western Front

29 October 2015 9:00 am

From ‘W.G.’, The Spectator, 30 October 1915: The late Dr. W.G. Grace had become in his lifetime a legend, and he is…

Barometer

10 October 2015 9:00 am

The death of Diesel The Volkswagen scandal has brought into question the future of the diesel engine. A century ago…

War, socialist tyranny and the oppression of the handicapped - welcome to the new dance season

19 September 2015 8:00 am

If there’s one thing scarcer than hen’s teeth in serious choreography nowadays, it’s a light heart. When was the last…

An Inspector Calls is poisonous, revisionist propaganda - which is why the luvvies love it

19 September 2015 8:00 am

What a load of manipulative, hysterical tosh is An Inspector Calls. It wasn’t a work with which I was familiar…

Cornelia Parker’s War Room at the Whitworth, Manchester

What are modern museums really for?

30 May 2015 9:00 am

Do we really need museums in the age of Wikipedia and Google? William Cook thinks we do but his children don’t agree

Spectator letters: England’s defining myth, and another forgotten genocide

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much…

Where Van Gogh learned to paint

14 February 2015 9:00 am

William Cook reports from the sooty netherworld that made an artist of Vincent Van Gogh

Standing firm is the price of civilisation. Are we still ready to pay it?

17 January 2015 9:00 am

Reading Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, as I have recently, you cannot help but be struck by what a perfectly…

What parenting meant in 1914

10 January 2015 9:00 am

‘Not still War and Peace!’ exclaimed my husband on 1 January during the all-day Tolstoy splurge on Radio 4. In reality…

We’re all sulky toddlers now – even when launching space probes

22 November 2014 9:00 am

I wonder how long it will be before we actually crawl back into the womb? The average mental age of…

The voices of Indian PoWs captured in the first world war

15 November 2014 9:00 am

At six o’clock on 31 May 1916, an Indian soldier who had been captured on the Western Front alongside British…

We know that war is hell. But it doesn’t ever make us stop doing it

15 November 2014 9:00 am

There’s a plausible theory — recently rehearsed in the BBC’s excellent two-part documentary The Lion’s Last Roar? — that our…

We're still repeating the mistakes of the first world war

11 October 2014 9:00 am

The time-honoured saying that England’s great battles have been won on the playing fields of Eton is a lot of…

My ghosts of Athens; a shooting and a royal wedding

27 September 2014 9:00 am

Athens This grimy semi-Levantine ancient city has its beauty spots, with childhood memories indelibly attached. There is a turn-of-the-century apartment…

Doctor Scroggy’s War (Photo: Mark Douet)

Charles III is made for numbskulls by numbskulls

27 September 2014 8:00 am

Suppose Charles were to reign as a meddlesome, self-pitying, indecisive plonker. It’s a thought. It’s now a play, too, by…

It’s not easy for a middle-aged woman to get inside the head of a 12-year-old innkeeper’s son in 1914

13 September 2014 9:00 am

Esther Freud wrote dazzlingly in the first person through the eyes of a five-year-old child in her first novel, Hideous…

‘A Battery Shelled’, 1919, by Percy Wyndham Lewis

The Imperial War Museum finds a deadly place to display first world war masterpieces

13 September 2014 9:00 am

The Imperial War Museum has reopened after a major refit and looks pretty dapper, even though it was overrun by…