Winston Churchill

Run, Boris, run: why middle-aged MPs have turned into fitness freaks

13 July 2019 9:00 am

Forget the cigar, the homburg and the V-for-victory sign. If Winston Churchill were around today, he’d be pounding the streets…

Giving the famous V-sign at the opening of RAAF headquarters, Croydon, 1948 [Getty]

Andrew Roberts’s generous new biography of the man who saved us in our darkest hour, Churchill reviewed

6 October 2018 9:00 am

Churchill must be the most written-about figure in public life since Napoleon Bonaparte (a subject, incidentally, to which Andrew Roberts…

Anita Leslie, aged 23 in 1937 © Tarka Leslie-King

Anita Leslie: sparkling socialite with the Croix de Guerre

18 August 2018 9:00 am

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

28 July 2018 9:00 am

Surely there is a bit of humbug in this outrage about the two remaining jihadi Beatles, Kotey and Elsheikh, and…

Premier performance: Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill

Andrew Roberts’s guide to Churchill on screen

13 January 2018 9:00 am

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?

9 December 2017 9:00 am

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

2 December 2017 9:00 am

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

7 October 2017 9:00 am

Literary reputation can be a fickle old business. Those garlanded during their lifetimes are often quickly forgotten once dead. Yet…

Demonised by history

23 September 2017 9:00 am

Some oleaginous interviewer once suggested to Winston Churchill that he was the greatest Briton who ever lived. The grand old…

High life

26 August 2017 9:00 am

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

14 May 2016 9:00 am

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

7 May 2016 9:00 am

The big returning show of the week began with servants laying out the silverware at a large country house in…

Putting a price on Winston Churchill’s head

30 April 2016 9:00 am

Getting a head Barack Obama dismissed Boris Johnson’s accusations that he shown disdain for Sir Winston Churchill by removing a bust…

The kindest man in the Bordeaux wine business

9 April 2016 9:00 am

There was a moment during the war when De Gaulle was being more than usually impossible. Roosevelt, furious, asked Churchill…

George Bell in his study at Chichester Palace in 1943

George Bell: witness to the truth

2 April 2016 9:00 am

George Bell (1883–1958) was, in many respects, a typical Anglican prelate of his era. He went to Westminster and Christ…

Preparing for modern warfare: Indian infantrymen c. 1940

The making of modern India

26 March 2016 9:00 am

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

24 October 2015 9:00 am

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

3 October 2015 9:00 am

Where will David Cameron rank among Tory prime ministers?

The knives come out of the cabinet in Churchill’s wartime government

28 March 2015 9:00 am

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

28 March 2015 9:00 am

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

21 March 2015 9:00 am

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

14 March 2015 9:00 am

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

21 February 2015 9:00 am

The gulf in understanding between the old and the young has widened with the news that the young are beginning…

Admiral Dönitz, left in charge of the Reich after Hitler’s suicide, was lucky to have escaped the noose at Nuremberg

The madness of Nazism laid bare

14 February 2015 9:00 am

‘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

7 February 2015 9:00 am

In time for the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death comes this pacy novel about his attempts to persuade the Americans…