Author Archives: bernardporter2013

If Sir Philip Green had been a character in a Victorian novel, he’d have come to a sticky end. Immensely rich, a Conservative Party donor, responsible for the bankruptcy yesterday of BHS, from which he is reckoned to have siphoned … Continue reading →

Hull City look as if they’re going to be in the playoffs for promotion to the Premier League. This is what I wrote (for the LRB Blog) the last time they were promoted. Predictably – and as mentioned below – … Continue reading →

The new British TV police drama Undercover – which I’m recording, and will catch up with when I get back to the UK – was criticized in the Guardian today by a genuine victim: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/25/woman-who-lived-with-police-spy-criticises-bbc-drama-undercover. I wrote a piece on this … Continue reading →

Here Jeremy Corbyn marks our ‘patriotic day’ entirely appropriately, in my view as a historian. (Ignore the BTL comments.) https://www.facebook.com/JeremyCorbyn4PM/photos/a.1455997631360978.1073741829. 1455715994722475/1554555978171809/?type=3&theater. Something that’s often forgotten about British (or English) ‘patriotism’ is that it was originally a radical concept. ‘Patriots’ in the … Continue reading →

Today he’s been knocked off his plinth by an entertainer called ‘Prince’ – an odd name – and our lovely nonagenarian Queen. But I don’t imagine that will last long. Most of the time just now it’s Shakespeare. He’ll be … Continue reading →

Sweden’s relationship with the EU is almost as problematical as Britain’s. She only joined in 1995 – 25 years after us – and on the basis of a pretty narrow popular vote. At the same time, her neighbour Norway voted … Continue reading →

Jeremy Corbyn is criticized because his support for continued British membership of the EU isn’t ‘enthusiastic’, ‘principled’ and ‘positive’ enough. But why should he pretend to be enthusiastic if he isn’t? For any socialist the European issue must be a … Continue reading →

I’ve been trying to think back to what I knew about Swedish history before I made my second home there twenty years ago. It turns out to be very little. There were the Vikings, of course. As schoolchildren we loved … Continue reading →

Why, considering that Britain and Sweden seemed to be travelling along the same political road up to the 1960s – towards ‘social democracy’ – did they come to diverge so widely thereafter? It can’t just be Thatcher. Or the Unions. Or the Swedes’ basic … Continue reading →

A couple of old (indeed, dead) imperialists have been in the news recently. The first is Cecil Rhodes, whose statue outside Oriel College Oxford I had never noticed, until the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ protest movement at Oxford University earlier this year … Continue reading →