Nigel Jones is a historian and journalist
As the author of eight non-fiction books, I am most often asked why did I chose to write a particular title. The answer is that my books are usually written out of obsession: to slake my personal thirst for knowledge on the subject in question – almost irrespective of whether the topic would interest anyone
‘The hills are alive,’ warbled Julie Andrews as she strode through a verdant Alpine mountain meadow, ‘with the sound of music. With songs they have sung, for a thousand years.’ But there was always a dark side to the peaks she sang about in The Sound of Music, and they have just claimed another victim. The
Labour marks 100 days in power tomorrow, but there is precious little for Keir Starmer to celebrate. It is a truism of modern politics that a government’s first three months or so sets the tone for everything that follows. If the newbies hit the ground running, all will be well; if not, disaster inevitably awaits.
Given the idolatry with which Americans worship the man widely seen as their greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, and the obsessive place that identity politics now occupies in the public spaces of the US, it was probably inevitable that the sexuality of American civil war winning ‘honest Abe’ would come under revisionist scrutiny sooner or later.
The general elections in Austria have delivered a sensational result, with the hard right, pro-Putin Freedom party (FPO) coming out on top for the first time in the Alpine republic’s post-second world war history. Projections after Sunday’s poll give the FPO 29 per cent – a three point lead over their nearest rivals, the conservative People’s party
Sir John Major has been sounding off. Again. The former Tory prime minister criticised his party’s Rwanda asylum plan as ‘un-Conservative and un-British’. In an interview with the BBC, Major said he thought Rishi Sunak’s plan to send migrants to Africa was ‘odious’: ‘I thought it was…if one dare say in a secular society, un-Christian,
Amidst all the focus on the triumph of Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Thuringia’s local state elections earlier this month, less attention has been paid to another upcoming European election in which the far-right is expected to do well: the general elections in Austria on 29 September. Kickl has made opposition to immigration the main platform
To meet one winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature would be seen by most bookish nerds like me as a real privilege; to meet two as extraordinarily lucky; but to enjoy extended encounters with three is surely very heaven. Such, however, has been my fortunate fate. The Nobel Prize for Literature is the world’s
Berlin awoke this morning in a state of shock. Although opinion polls had predicted that the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) would do well in yesterday’s eastern state elections in Thuringia and Saxony, the cold reality that the anti-immigration, anti-Islamist party has topped the polls in Thuringia and come a close second in Saxony, takes some
If Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is seriously intending to crack down on ‘hateful and harmful opinions’ – as she has promised to do – she will no doubt need the help of a whole army of narks and snitches to keep tabs on such unwelcome views on social media and report them to the authorities. Fortunately, there is
As a connoisseur of British political scandals I have long puzzled over one of the most intriguing of all such affairs: did Edwardian Liberal Prime Minister H.H. Asquith have sex with Venetia Stanley, a woman young enough to be his daughter? She certainly took up huge amounts of his time and attention in August 1914
This is a complex tale involving an American murder, the popular British TV series Flipper, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche – but bear with me. Next month sees the centenary of the conviction of two spoiled Chicago boys – Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18 – who admitted carrying out what the press at the time
Eight decades after the second world war ended, for how much longer will we produce massive books about Hitler and the Nazis? Richard J. Evans, the former regius professor of history at the University of Cambridge, is one of the senior gardeners in this noxious orchard, having devoted a lifetime’s study to the subject. As
As a confirmed critic of modern tattoos, who sounded off in these very pages about the ugly plague of body tats infesting our streets, I might be expected to disapprove of the latest manifestation of the fashion – the habit of many athletes taking part in the Paris Olympics to adorn themselves with the distinctive
Summer is the season most associated with the enjoyment of life. It’s when people forget their cares, down tools, and head for the beach to enjoy sunny days and sexy nights. That’s how it was for me anyway until I came close to life’s polar opposite – barely surviving two close brushes with death. So
Yesterday’s exchange of prisoners at Ankara airport in Turkey will have been personally ordered by President Putin. He is a veteran of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police agency, and no doubt aware of the role that swapping agents with the West has played in the troubled history of superpower rivalry. Putin knows that Russian
I blame Brexit. In the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, when the whole nation was still in the throes of a collective nervous breakdown, I succumbed to the prevailing mood of madness and went on a TV dating programme. No, it wasn’t Naked Attraction, the Channel 4 show in which participants strip down to reveal
Rishi Sunak devoted part of the last day of his doomed premiership to meeting Becky Holt, Britain’s most tattooed mother, on ITV’s This Morning show. Ms Holt was clad in a bikini which revealed much of the 95 per cent of her body surface that is covered in tattoos. After the brief encounter, she told
Anyone visiting the small Westphalian city of Münster in north-west Germany may notice three man-sized cages hanging from the handsome St Lambert’s Roman Catholic Church in the city’s main square, the Prinzipalmarkt, and wonder about their provenance. The cages are one of the last visible relics of an episode in which society took leave of
Latin America has long been the traditional home of the military coup – or ‘golpe’ in Spanish – so the sight yesterday of soldiers rushing the presidential palace in La Paz, capital of Bolivia, and ramming its doors open with an armoured vehicle, may not have seemed surprising. The abortive coup attempt was aimed at
