History
We should celebrate Magna Carta by abolishing the European Arrest Warrant
The European Arrest Warrant is incompatible with our tradition of justice
How the French won Waterloo (or think they did)
The French would still prefer to think of Napoleon’s last defeat as a moral victory
BBC2's Armada has something for everybody - including three yummy female historians
It has been a while since the BBC really pushed the boat out on the epic history documentary front. Perhaps…
Despair after VE day… the men left behind by victory
The ex-officers left behind after VE day
The carpet-bombing of Hamburg killed 40,000 people. It also did good
The carpet-bombing of Hamburg killed 40,000 people. It also did good
Joseph Goebbels: Hitler’s ‘little doctor’ was devoted unto death
It is ironic that this weighty biography of Hitler’s evil genius of a propaganda minister is published on the day…
This election has made me understand how it felt to be a lefty under Thatcher
On the weekend of 25 April 2015 I started to believe that the party I supported might not win an…
Spectator letters: England’s defining myth, and another forgotten genocide
Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much…
A 1992 election-day lunch with the young David Cameron
Lunch with a young Cameron on polling day, 1992
An education to know: remembering Raymond Carr
Laughter, bird-watching and erudition with Raymond Carr
There’s something about Mary (Wollstonecraft and Shelley)
If Mary Wollstonecraft, as she once declared, ‘was not born to tred in the beaten track’, the same with even…
Moving heaven and earth: Galileo’s subversive spyglass
We live in an age of astronomical marvels. Last year Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft made a daring rendezvous with the comet…
The triumph of Guatemalan rum (and a disaster for a Guatemalan ambassador)
For many years, the Central American republic of Guatemala had a grievance against the United Kingdom. It claimed sovereignty over…
‘You are always close to me’: Unity Mitford’s souvenirs of Hitler
Hitler’s adoring notes to Unity Mitford – and her family’s campaign to stop my book
John Maynard Keynes: transforming global economy while reading Virginia Woolf
To the 21st-century right, especially in the United States, John Maynard Keynes has become a much-hated figure whose name is…
The lost words of John Aubrey, from apricate to scobberlotcher
Hilary Spurling found a certain blunting of the irregularities of John Aubrey’s language in Ruth Scurr’s vicarious autobiography of the…
Anders Brievik: lonely computer-gamer on a killing spree
In 2011, Anders Breivik murdered 69 teenagers in a socialist summer camp outside the Norwegian capital of Oslo, and eight…
John Aubrey and his circle: those magnificent men and their flying machines
John Aubrey investigated everything from the workings of the brain, the causation of winds and the origins of Stonehenge to…
How long is it since anniversaries stopped being measured in years?
‘You must promise to be with us for our silver wedding D.V. which will be in four years,’ wrote Queen…
Zac Goldsmith: How my dad saved Britain
If you’re grateful not to be in the euro, it’s James Goldsmith and his ‘rebel army’ you should thank