World War One
The Atlantic twists the truth
The Atlantic has stunk up an otherwise beautiful Labor Day weekend with a uniquely ugly story. Anti-Trump editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg claims that…
Does COVID-19 mean socialism or social collapse?
Inequality is the price we pay for civilization. Property rights, inheritance customs and unequal gains from technological innovation have long…
Gripping, immersive and powerful: 1917 reviewed
Sam Mendes’s 1917 is the first world war drama that this week won the Golden Globe for best film and…
‘I don’t know how ever Jerry stands it’: diary of a world war one artillery man
My sister’s boyfriend is a solitary man and easily overwhelmed by another’s presence. On his rare visits he flits in…
‘We’re using the same Aga and Belfast sink as Jill Archer’: how Radio 4 made Home Front
It feels like a long time since the launch of Home Front on Radio 4 back in June 2014, retracing…
Was there pleasure at Passchendaele?
At ten to eleven we filed outside the church and assembled in the graveyard around a small cenotaph commemorating the…
London calling
What is the Edinburgh Fringe? It’s a sabbatical, a pit stop, a pause-and-check-the-map opportunity for actors who don’t quite know…
From the archives: the liberty of the battlefield
From ‘Soldiers for the land’, The Spectator, 13 November 1915: It is certain that, when the war is over, tens of…
Does history provide the answer to what happened in Tunisia?
There’s a part of me that thinks OK, we’ve heard enough now, one year on from the beginning of the…
Without Gallipoli, we’d have no Page 3
Some years ago I paid a visit to the site of the Gallipoli landings because I was mildly obsessed with…
Shirley Williams: Saving my mother from the scriptwriters
Jasper Rees talks to Shirley Williams about the forthcoming screen portrayal of her mother
The Imperial War Museum finds a deadly place to display first world war masterpieces
The Imperial War Museum has reopened after a major refit and looks pretty dapper, even though it was overrun by…