History
Staring into the abyss
The first interaction between two men recorded in the Bible involves a murder. In the earliest classic of English literature,…
All that jazz
This is a big book, a monumental text with 800 illustrations, 400 of them in colour, to be contemplated more…
Yesterday’s hero
The unforgettable moment a quarter of a century ago when the Berlin Wall came down was the most vivid drama…
Suicide
There was a marvellous man in Shakespeare’s day known as John Smyth the Sebaptist. ‘In an act so deeply shocking…
Why are kids making posters for their GCSEs?
My niece, Lara, 15, has a mind like a surgical blade. On any subject, from calculus to The X Factor,…
Eight presidents
Encounters with leaders of the free world – as a journalist, as a friend, and as a boy running in the hallway
Corsica
Napoleon’s birthplace, Casa Buona-parte, in Ajaccio, Corsica’s capital, is pretty grand. It has high ceilings, generous, silk-lined rooms and a…
The political prophet
The problem with a futuristic thesis — particularly when summarised by a futuristic title — is that it is likely…
An aura of sovereignty
For the last 50 years Americans have been decrying the increase of presidential power whenever the party they oppose is…
Hitler’s Valkyrie
Unity Mitford at 100
Napoleon’s last victory
If you visit Waterloo today, there’s no question which general comes out on top
A rake’s progress
Philip Hensher on the scandalous 17th-century courtier whose hellfire reputation has overshadowed his fine satirical poetry
Barometer
The not-so-great charter David Cameron wants every child to be taught about Magna Carta. Some bits he might want to…
The forgotten liberator
Slavery was ended in England not through blood and glory, but by the common law
Diary
I feel an intense antipathy for Vladimir Putin. No one on the international scene has aroused in me such dislike…
Osborne’s Waterloo
The defence of Hougoumont is one of the great British feats of arms. If the farmhouse had fallen to Bonaparte’s…
Women against the vote
The suffragettes’ opponents deserve to be remembered sympathetically
Politics as Victorian melodrama
The egotistical Churchill may have viewed the second world war as pure theatre, but that was exactly what was needed at the time, says Sam Leith
A fictional country split in two
Sudan — a country that ceased to exist in 2011 — is or was one of the last untouristed wildernesses…
Why it’s right to criticise the newly dead
I could start by remarking that we should not speak ill of the dead, quoting the pertinent Latin phrase: de…
Barometer
Years of war Imaginative souls have tried to compared the situation in Ukraine with that which preceded the first world…
Stealing history
What do you feel when a survivor of Auschwitz tells you their story?
The right sort of chap
Kim Philby’s treachery escaped detection for so long through the stupidity and snobbery of the old-boy network surrounding him, says Philip Hensher
Diary
São Paolo It was back in 2001 that my good friend Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the acronym ‘Bric’,…
Back in time to a childhood discovery in Africa
About 55 years ago, when I was about ten, my younger brother Roger and I discovered a slave pit in…
