First World War

Even near the front line, there were flowers on the ward

6 September 2014 9:00 am

It’s the tub of bright red geraniums at the heart of the picture that startles. How did anyone have time…

Portrait of the week

9 August 2014 9:00 am

Home The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge joined 50 heads of state at the St Symphorien cemetery near Mons to…

Spectator letters: A defence of nursing assistants, a mystery shotgun, and a response to Melanie Phillips

9 August 2014 9:00 am

Poor treatment Sir: Jane Kelly’s article (‘No tea or sympathy’, 2 August) on the lack of empathy and emotional support…

Why I’m against posthumous pardons, even for Alan Turing

26 July 2014 9:00 am

Ross Clark is a columnist I try to read because he is never trite. So I was sorry to miss…

The gardener-soldiers of the First World War

28 June 2014 9:00 am

First, a confession. Even an ardent radio addict can enjoy a fortnight away from the airwaves, disconnected, switched off, unlistening.…

Paul Johnson’s diary: Boris would make a great PM – but he must strike now

10 May 2014 9:00 am

I feel an intense antipathy for Vladimir Putin. No one on the international scene has aroused in me such dislike…

Opinionated and recalcitrant: Oona Chaplin as Kitty Trevelyan

Gas gangrene, shell shock and flinty women: BBC One's new Sunday night offering is no soother

12 April 2014 9:00 am

Sunday nights. What are they for? Eggs. Tea. Toast. Nerves about the week ahead. Something comforting on TV.  But comfort…

How I became editor of The Spectator - aged 27

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Thirty years ago this Saturday, I became editor of this magazine. In the same month, the miners’ strike began, Anthony…

Do wars always start in years ending ‘14’?

15 March 2014 9:00 am

Years of war Imaginative souls have tried to compared the situation in Ukraine with that which preceded the first world…

Niall Ferguson’s diary: Brazil is overtaking us – but it no longer feels like that

1 March 2014 9:00 am

 São Paolo It was back in 2001 that my good friend Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the acronym ‘Bric’,…

Spectator letters: Wind and bias, and the Scots at war

22 February 2014 9:00 am

Caution over wind Sir: While the broadcast media have assailed their audiences with simplistic yet blanket coverage of the floods…

Brave Tommies and dim earls — Oh What a Lovely War is hoity-toity reductionism

22 February 2014 9:00 am

Here it is. Fifty years late. Oh What a Lovely War was originally staged at Stratford East in 1964. It…

The Spectator's notes: What shall we call the Country Formerly Known as Britain?

15 February 2014 9:00 am

Last week, David Cameron said that we have ‘seven months to save the most extraordinary country in history’. He meant…

How the first world war inspired the EU

8 February 2014 9:00 am

To understand the real meaning of the EU, you must grasp that it originated in the first world war, rather than the second

When No Man's Land is home

25 January 2014 9:00 am

Countless writers and film-makers this year will be trying their hand at forcing us to wake up and smell the…

Bye-bye Bric, hello Mint — are Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey really the new boom economies?  

11 January 2014 9:00 am

New year new ideas as we woke up on Monday morning to find ourselves in Lagos with Evan Davies trying…

How radio — and the digital age — help us to remember the first world war

4 January 2014 9:00 am

Perhaps the most moving programme of all amid the huge range that will mark the coming centenary of the Great…

Sebastian Faulks's diary: Inside the official first world war commemorations

14 December 2013 9:00 am

A year or so ago I was asked to sit on a committee that advises the government on how to…

Norman Stone: From Syria to Iraq, the mess of the first world war is with us still

14 December 2013 9:00 am

So many of the world’s troubles, even today, can be traced back to the empire-builders of 1914 – and the peace-makers of 1919

The Briton whose achievement equals that of the Pharaohs'

16 November 2013 9:00 am

We constantly need to be reminded that the consequence of war is death. In the case of the first world…

Charles Moore's notes: It's great there's a World Islamic Economic Forum — now can we have a Jewish one?

2 November 2013 9:00 am

As I write, the World Islamic Economic Forum is opening in London, the first time it has been held in…

Why Jeremy Paxman's Great War deserves a place on your bookshelf

2 November 2013 9:00 am

The Great War involved the civilian population like no previous conflict. ‘Men, women and children, factory, workshop and army —…

Come over here, Tom Stoppard

19 October 2013 9:00 am

David Blackburn talks to Gwyneth Williams,who wants to revitalise Radio 4’s coverage of the arts

Cat fight: tension mounts between the Great Powers in 1905 as Edward VII, Kaiser Wilhelm II and the French foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé, squabble over Morocco

What caused the first world war?

12 October 2013 9:00 am

In pre-1914 cosmopolitan society, everyone seemed to be related — ambassadors as well as monarchs. But increased militarisation was fast obliterating old family ties, says Jane Ridley 

Meeting the Enemy, by Richard Van Emden; 1914, by Allan Mallinson - review

5 October 2013 9:00 am

The Great War was an obscene and futile conflict laying waste a generation and toppling emperors. Yet here are two…