History
Modern historians take a Roman approach to history – whether they admit it or not
To what use does one put history? Romans thought it provided ‘lessons’. Modern historians rather sniff at the idea, but…
The shocking story of Charles and Mary Lamb: Slightly Foxed podcast reviewed
The Slightly Foxed podcast, like the quarterly and old bookshop of the same name, is almost muskily lovely. It’s the…
A toast to Tim Beardson
I am in an Eliot mood, not a Keatsian one. ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ is a surprisingly… mellow…
The National Archives are making historians history
Restrictions on the National Archives are a disaster for historians
The myth of the ‘stolen country’
The myth of the ‘stolen country’
Fascism: the most abused term in America
A well-dressed young man walks down the Potsdamer Straße in Berlin, days before the end of March in 1933. He’s…
The myth of the ‘stolen country’
Last month, in the middle of the COVID panic, a group of freshmen at the University of Connecticut were welcomed…
1619, 1776 and all that
Friday’s news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died after her long battle with cancer has briefly pushed most other topics…
City of dazzling mosaics: the golden age of Ravenna
Ian Thomson describes Ravenna’s golden age, when classical Rome, Byzantium and Christianity met
What would it mean to ‘decolonise’ the Classics?
Can the Classics escape the grip of their past?
We’re making a spectacle of shame
When I was about ten, on return home from church I ate a peach, the juice of which dribbled down…
Does the curriculum really need ‘decolonising’?
Layla Moran, the Lib Dems’ education spokesman, has written to Gavin Williamson urging him to do something about ‘systemic racism’…
To understand the past, you need to inhabit it for a while
‘It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet; Work your hands from day to day, the winds…
Tiberius and the ‘phantoms of liberty’
Word has it that ministers already do not bother to argue their corner with the government’s inner ring, while a…
What Britain should learn from Belgium: history can be reappraised
Is it best to erase history, or reappraise history? We haven’t started taking down statues of royalty in Britain yet,…
Toppling a statue isn’t erasing history – it’s writing it
I couldn’t disagree more with Sir Keir Starmer (it was ‘completely wrong,’ ‘it shouldn’t have been done in that way’)…
The genuine polymath is still one in a million
With unlimited information just a click away, everyone can pass as a polymath today, says Philip Hensher
The Romans showed how quickly hospitals can be built
The speed with which ‘model’ Nightingale hospitals have been designed and erected across the UK reminds one of the experts…
From ‘divine Caesar’ to Hitler’s lapdog – the rise and fall of Benito Mussolini
Mussolini dreamed of a new Roman empire and dominion over the Mediterranean. Two decades later he was hanging by his feet in a public square, as Ian Thomson relates
COVID-19 vs the American spirit of resistance
If the coronavirus were as deadly as the bubonic plague, which killed about a third of the population of Europe…
Globalisation is scarcely new: it dates back to the year 1000
In Japan, people thought the world would end in 1052. In the decades leading up to judgment day, Kyoto was…
Lord Heseltine could launch a Farage-style fight-back
Lord Heseltine’s electrifying hair once whipped the party faithful into paroxysms of euphoria. But since today he sees his hopes…
What difference will ‘weirdos and misfits’ make to the civil service?
Dominic Cummings has written a modest blog inviting mathematicians, physicists, AI specialists and other experts to help him revolutionise the…
History may hold the secrets of statecraft – but not the secrets of business leadership
‘How can one person lead one hundred?’ That was one of the questions in my Cambridge entrance exams back in…
For the ancient Greeks, the only point in taking part was to win
The England team reached the final of the rugby world cup in Japan but they lost. As athletes, they knew…
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