Winston Churchill
Run, Boris, run: why middle-aged MPs have turned into fitness freaks
Forget the cigar, the homburg and the V-for-victory sign. If Winston Churchill were around today, he’d be pounding the streets…
Andrew Roberts’s generous new biography of the man who saved us in our darkest hour, Churchill reviewed
Churchill must be the most written-about figure in public life since Napoleon Bonaparte (a subject, incidentally, to which Andrew Roberts…
Anita Leslie: sparkling socialite with the Croix de Guerre
Anita Leslie knew how to tell a story. Arranging to sit for a portrait six months before she died, she…
Boris Johnson: Why we should chuck Chequers
Surely there is a bit of humbug in this outrage about the two remaining jihadi Beatles, Kotey and Elsheikh, and…
Andrew Roberts’s guide to Churchill on screen
Gary Oldman has joined a long list of actors who have portrayed Winston Churchill — no fewer than 35 of…
Letters: why is the C of E still messing around with the Carlile report?
The Carlile report Sir: The Bishop of Bath and Wells tells us (Letters, 2 December) that nobody is holding up…
Meghan Markle ticks almost every modern box. Let’s not pretend she’s a tough sell
We are congratulating ourselves and the royal family on overcoming prejudice by welcoming Meghan Markle’s engagement to Prince Harry. But…
A poet in prose
Literary reputation can be a fickle old business. Those garlanded during their lifetimes are often quickly forgotten once dead. Yet…
Demonised by history
Some oleaginous interviewer once suggested to Winston Churchill that he was the greatest Briton who ever lived. The grand old…
High life
When the Germans smuggled arguably the world’s most evil man into Russia 100 years ago, they did not imagine the…
The untrustworthy Winston Churchill, 1916
From ‘Colonel Winston Churchill’, The Spectator, 13 May 1916: The return of Colonel Churchill to the House of Commons, which we are…
Even the sternest Leavisite critic would find it hard to resist BBC2's Peaky Blinders
The big returning show of the week began with servants laying out the silverware at a large country house in…
The kindest man in the Bordeaux wine business
There was a moment during the war when De Gaulle was being more than usually impossible. Roosevelt, furious, asked Churchill…
George Bell: witness to the truth
George Bell (1883–1958) was, in many respects, a typical Anglican prelate of his era. He went to Westminster and Christ…
The making of modern India
The sacrifices made by India on the Allies’ behalf in the second world war would profoundly affect the country’s future for better or worse, says Philip Hensher
Curry and Modafinil with Winston Churchill
The bar at the Special Forces club has the marvellous rule for newcomers that they should talk to the person…
David Cameron’s place in the premier league of Tory history
Where will David Cameron rank among Tory prime ministers?
The knives come out of the cabinet in Churchill’s wartime government
Coalitions, as David Cameron has discovered, are tricky things to manage. How much more difficult, then, was it for Winston…
Be different, be original: that’s what makes a popular politician
I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like being a political leader. I find this difficult because I…
The art of political biography remains in intensive care if Giles Radice’s latest book is anything to go by, says Simon Heffer
With the odd exception — I think principally of Charles Moore’s life of Margaret Thatcher — the genre of political…
It’s a pointless waste of time for David Cameron to resurrect the hunting debate
Of all the election promises politicians make in the run-up to a general election the one most certain to remain…
The elderly are society’s new baddies
The gulf in understanding between the old and the young has widened with the news that the young are beginning…
The madness of Nazism laid bare
‘If the war is lost, then it is of no concern to me if the people perish in it.’ Bruno…
Powers of persuasion: how Churchill brought America on side
In time for the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death comes this pacy novel about his attempts to persuade the Americans…