Nigel Jones is a historian and journalist
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I had always been interested in politics but had not done anything practical until the rise of Nigel Farage’s Ukip. He was proving a thorn in the side of David Cameron in 2013, which attracted my admiring attention, so I decided to try and get involved. Despite having done my bit for European unity by
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Sir Keir Starmer’s determination to prove to voters that Labour has changed, by purging the party’s far left, may look like cruel contemporary opportunism to his opponents. However, it actually fits a pattern that has recurred throughout the party’s history. Ever since Labour’s foundation in 1900, the party has been an uneasy coalition between a
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It’s always a sad day for journalists when a newspaper goes to the great printing room in the sky. But for all Londoners, the death of the capital’s last surviving evening paper is particularly poignant. The Evening Standard has announced that it is to cease publication as a daily paper – remaining alive only as a weekly edition.
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Rishi Sunak’s snap summer election means that Nigel Farage faces a decisive moment. For months if not years, Farage has held back from taking a role in the heat of the political fray. Instead, he has preferred to be a backseat driver to his ally Richard Tice as leader of the Reform UK party he
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My son and various well-meaning friends have been advising me to abandon writing history books and cash in on the trend for boarding school misery memoirs. On the face of it, as someone who was sent away aged seven and remained in these institutions until I was 18, I am well qualified to add my
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Somewhat unfairly, Slovakia is often overlooked and ignored as a quiet and peaceful backwater in the often turbulent turmoil of east European geopolitics. The assassination attempt that almost ended the life of its controversial prime minister Robert Fico yesterday has changed all that. Fico was shot five times in the abdomen and arm. After undergoing
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We haven’t heard much from Dominic Cummings since he walked out of No. 10 Downing Street in November 2020. Now the cerebral Vote Leave mastermind has broken his silence and given us an insight into his latest project. He has proposed a new ‘start up’ party to replace the Tories after what he expects will
