Category Archives: Uncategorized

If Suella Braveman is thinking of using today’s sacking to release her inner fascist, she would be in strong historical company. Fascism (or quasi-fascism, or extreme nationalism, or whatever else you want to call it) is usually thought of as … Continue reading →

I’ve been busy over the last week reading this book for review. (I really do read, thoroughly, the books I’m sent!) Here’s the latest draft. – Now, hopefully, to get back to proper blogging, in between hospital appointments. Nicholas Rankin, … Continue reading →

In 1957 Ian Fleming’s brother, Peter, published a novel called The Sixth Column, which I read in the ’seventies because I was researching the field of espionage history at the time. It turned out to be very disappointing (by comparison … Continue reading →

I’m no expert on present-day Israel/Palestine, although as a British imperial historian I do know something about the origins of the current crisis there. That expertise has persuaded me that some of the charges levelled against the current Israeli state … Continue reading →

It pains me to say it, but on the ‘failure of multiculturalism’ in Britain Suella Braverman is essentially right. The upper classes never have integrated into the various cultures of the rest of Britain, or even tried to; by contrast … Continue reading →

Rory Stewart – ex-Conservative MP (one of the decent ones) and also an Old Etonian (ditto) – writes this in his recent memoir, Politics on the Edge. ‘Campaigning back in Cumbria, I began to notice that if a house was … Continue reading →

I must say I’m highly suspicious of this recent – albeit mild – fuss about Chinese espionage at the heart of UK government. In the first place, all countries ‘spy’ on each other, in one way or another, and always … Continue reading →

My work on the late Victorian origins of the London Metropolitan Police Special Branch (The Origins of the Vigilant State, 1987) obviously familiarised me with the ‘Whitechapel Murders’, but not to any great depth, as ‘Jack the Ripper’ was the … Continue reading →

Another long silence from me. Sorry. Medical again. I think the Creator was distracted when s/he designed the prostate. (It must have been a She, I think. Women don’t have them. And it probably serves us males right.) In the … Continue reading →

I once – or it may have been twice – wrote to Eton College to ask about its History syllabus: mainly in order to find out what may have lain behind the version of British history presented in the Old … Continue reading →