Second world war
Beware of Brits bearing arms
Twenty-odd years ago, while on holiday in the deep Mani at the foot of the Peloponnese, I got into conversation…
Diary
My wife and I spent the winter in Worcestershire. This allowed me to tell everyone back home in the States:…
Diary
I feel an intense antipathy for Vladimir Putin. No one on the international scene has aroused in me such dislike…
Cheating history
I was so looking forward to Generation War (BBC2, Saturday) — a three-part drama series covering the second world war…
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
Directing the war effort
John Ford was the first of the five famous Hollywood film directors to go to war. He went expecting to…
Plucky little Denmark
Of all the statistics generated by the Holocaust, perhaps some of the most disturbing in the questions they give rise…
The 100-year plot
To understand the real meaning of the EU, you must grasp that it originated in the first world war, rather than the second
Write what you know
Adam Foulds’s latest novel is less successful than its predecessor. In 2009 he reached the Booker shortlist with The Quickening…
Diary
I’ve worked for the BBC for years and have been listening to the Today programme all my adult life, but…
Sleeping with the enemy
Around 200 Englishwomen lived through the German Occupation of Paris. Nicholas Shakespeare’s aunt Priscilla was one. Men in the street…
The Spectator’s Notes
As I write, the World Islamic Economic Forum is opening in London, the first time it has been held in…
Long life
Given that more than 9,000 innocent Italian civilians, many of them women and children, died in Nazi massacres during the…
Long life
My village, Stoke Bruerne in south Northamptonshire, is just getting back to normal after a great influx of visitors for…
A world without Wallis
In both his novels and non-fiction, D. J. Taylor has long been fascinated by the period between the wars. Now…
The hero of Burma
Given the outcome of recent military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is pertinent to look for one particular quality…
Escape through the locks
The title, the subtitle, the author’s plain name, even the jacket’s photograph of a laughing old lady in sunglasses: none…
Diary
Next time I’m in a sauna I’m going to say: ‘It’s like a school sports hall on prize day in…
