Category Archives: Uncategorized

Global wars in the past – i.e. those that have spilled over the confines of single continents – have generally been fought about territory, trade, religion, sovereignty, security, ideology, race, and/or the personal ambitions of those most responsible for provoking … Continue reading →

Whatever became of noblesse oblige? In feudal times it was supposed both to justify the upper classes, and to soften their impact on society more generally. The idea was that if you were very rich and privileged, you had a … Continue reading →

OK, I’m back in Blighty, after six months. And what a contrast to the European countries we’ve driven through! Dirty streets, shuttered up shops, few public amenities working, a corrupt government, and a vile public political discourse; quite a shock, … Continue reading →

I’ve had a host of messages – well, three – regretting my decision to give up blogging, and pleading with me to come back. So here I am again; presently preparing for our journey back to Blighty – by car … Continue reading →

Last night Kajsa attended a meeting she had spent weeks arranging in a nearby suburb, for the ‘Left’ and ‘Green’ parties in Stockholm, to discuss the threat of ‘Fascism’ in Sweden; only to have it brutally attacked by neo-Nazis, dressed … Continue reading →

Incidentally – and following on from my last post – I used to think that writing novels must be far easier than writing history; not insisting, as history does, that you are bound by facts, but allowing you instead to … Continue reading →

What’s the point of blogging? Only a tiny handful of people read the posts of obscure academics like me. To be fair, a large audience was not what I expected, or even wanted, when I began this blog ten years … Continue reading →

Strictly speaking, democracy can be squared with dictatorship if the demos is choosing its dictators for itself. That – for those of us who wouldn’t welcome this outcome – is the great danger of the ‘populism’ which is gripping so … Continue reading →

I’ve just finished reading Tom Baldwin’s Keir Starmer, The Biography.  The author insists that it’s not ‘authorised’; but it could well be, relying as it does on sources very close to Starmer, including the man himself, and being overall pretty … Continue reading →