History doesn"t repeat itself. Nevertheless, comparisons between the present and the past may be helpful"so long, at least, as one recognizes that circumstances are different. For many of us in the West, Islamism"the extreme and intolerant form of Islam"presents us with the most ...
Tony Blair sought to return to frontline politics last week with a speech to the Open Britain movement, in which he called on those of us who voted to remain in the European Union not to accept a hard Brexit as inevitable, and even suggested that last year's referendum decision might yet be ...
The Fifth French Republic was created in 1959 by General de Gaulle, and its constitution was devised to give France strong and stable government. It has now lasted longer than any regime since the Revolution of 1789, except for the Third Republic (1871"1940). To this extent it must be judged a ...
For too many months, for the first time in forty years, we were without a dog. Wattie, the last of a trio of clumber spaniels, had died, gently, of old age. It's wise, of course, to have a younger dog in the house so that you are not left dogless, but it hadn"t seemed right to have imposed a ...
When I was young and writing history essays, I kept a store of useful quotations in my head, somebody else's words being a neat or at least easy way of kicking off. Likewise when I became a newspaper columnist. One that I often trotted out came from Bacon's Essays: "What is truth? said jesting ...
Theresa May is clearly delighted to be the first foreign leader to meet President Trump and has been trotting out the ritual "Special Relationship" phrase, one that makes many of us cringe with embarrassment. It's like that other cant boast"that the United Kingdom "punches above its ...
Like many who had read, enjoyed, and admired Hemingway, I read A.E. Hotchner's memoir Papa Hemingway soon after it came out. That would have been four or five years after Hemingway shot himself. Even before then I doubt if many bought Mary Hemingway's loyal-wife explanation that the gun had gone ...
Orwell once wrote that he had never managed to dislike Hitler personally; there was something pathetic and hangdog about his face. I feel a bit like that about Vladimir Putin. For all I know he may have had a blissful childhood, but he looks as if he might have been a neglected little boy, always ...
In 1922 Churchill told the House of Commons that "The whole map of Europe has been changed""by the Great War. "But," he said, "as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their ...
Can anyone make sense of the Middle East? Certainly those of us who perforce rely on television and newspaper reporting and analysis are in a poor position to do so, for all the professionalism and expertise of journalists and pundits. But it seems that the State Department, the Foreign Office in ...
