Winston Churchill
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…
Churchill’s return
From ‘Colonel Winston Churchill’, The Spectator, 13 May 1916: The return of Colonel Churchill to the House of Commons, which we are…
That’s entertainment
The big returning show of the week began with servants laying out the silverware at a large country house in…
Barometer
Getting a head Barack Obama dismissed Boris Johnson’s accusations that he shown disdain for Sir Winston Churchill by removing a bust…
A gentleman of Bordeaux
There was a moment during the war when De Gaulle was being more than usually impossible. Roosevelt, furious, asked Churchill…
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…
‘Help the British anyhow’
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…
Premier league
Where will David Cameron rank among Tory prime ministers?
Back-stabbing the old warrior
Coalitions, as David Cameron has discovered, are tricky things to manage. How much more difficult, then, was it for Winston…
Long life
I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like being a political leader. I find this difficult because I…
Punch and Judy politics
With the odd exception — I think principally of Charles Moore’s life of Margaret Thatcher — the genre of political…
Long life
Of all the election promises politicians make in the run-up to a general election the one most certain to remain…
Long life
The gulf in understanding between the old and the young has widened with the news that the young are beginning…
Ten days in May
‘If the war is lost, then it is of no concern to me if the people perish in it.’ Bruno…
Churchill’s charm offensive
In time for the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death comes this pacy novel about his attempts to persuade the Americans…
Marx men
Ian Thomson celebrates the anarchic genius of Groucho and his brothers
Long life
The Times has given way to the Daily Telegraph as the bastion of the established order, for— with the one…
The only way is Essex
Stephen Bayley revisits the ambitious, and for its day visionary, campus that is Essex University for its 50th birthday celebrations
Palaces for the people
Sir Winston Churchill did not invent the prefab, but on 26 March 1944 he made an important broadcast promising to…
Never
He won’t be remembered as Lord Bannside, but Ian Paisley will be remembered for shouting: ‘Never, never, never, never.’ The…
A monumental achievement
Ivor Roberts-Jones was in many ways the right artist at the wrong time. Had the sculptor been born a few…
Keeper of the secrets
Memories of Mary Soames, Churchill’s remarkable daughter
