Category Archives: Uncategorized

Of course we’re not at the end of it yet; but already it has to be accepted that Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic is one of the most incompetent and disastrous of any nation’s, resulting in many thousands of … Continue reading →

I watched this press conference live on TV this morning. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-barnier-eu-uk-trade-talks-boris-johnson-latest-a9550691.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR23QXq17irrpYxc6gWIhusqE7_m6VzeOn8TJ055wwDs_AkkmSNZxB4rBSo#Echobox=1591356993. Barnier is listing all Johnson’s broken pledges to the EU over the last few months. Comparing him to our politicians – Boris and his pathetic Brexit trusties – made … Continue reading →

I get a number of these: emails from school students hoping – in effect – that I’ll write their essays for them. I imagine she’s contacted other historians too. Doesn’t it occur to them that we might have expressed our … Continue reading →

When I first published books I used to eagerly check all the papers for reviews of them, usually taking hours to leaf through all the likely ones in my university library. (This was before Google Search, of course.) Now I … Continue reading →

I’m greatly missing the Swedish summer, and my beloved sambo. Can anyone advise me how to get from Hull to Stockholm during lockdown? Strictly speaking, as a vulnerable oldie I shouldn’t leave my house; and even then of course there’s … Continue reading →

Renaissance Florence isn’t ‘my period’ – to trot out the familiar historian’s defence – but I do wonder whether the Medicis don’t provide the closest precedent for present-day British politics; not in their bloodiness, of course, but in the amorality … Continue reading →

Boris can’t get rid of Dominic. He’s his brain. Boris on his own is glib, lazy and fundamentally stupid. Dominic by contrast is – not exactly intelligent, I would say, but cunning. He read History at University: a more cerebral … Continue reading →

I’m working just now on the copy-edit of the new edition of my The Lion’s Share, due out in September. It’s very little changed from the 5th edition (2012), apart from a new concluding chapter on ‘Brexit and the Empire’, … Continue reading →

I’ve been watching the rather prescient 2011 film Contagion (Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow…). Quite incidentally, I was struck by this statement, from the mouth of the character played by Elliot Gould: ‘Blogging isn’t writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.’ That’s put me in my place.

Of course I have no informed opinion about when to shut down the Lockdown, or any of the other matters surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic. I’m the last person to ask about matters of the body, for years having confused my … Continue reading →