Month: November 2017

A long piece about Dorothy L. Sayers’s conservatism is best described as work in progress though a few short postings have gone up from time to time, covering various aspects…

On June 14 as the defences of Port Stanley faltered and Mount Tumbledown was captured, a ceasefire was declared in the Falklands. On the same day the commander of the…

It is a little difficult to listen to a series that is broadcast at 1.45 pm every day on Radio 4 in fifteen minute chunks but there will be a…

The Conservative History Journal blog is very pleased to be publishing this article about an unjustly neglected Conservative politician and personality. The first Lord Hailsham played an important part in…

Each man’s death diminishes me. John Donne’s words echo in my mind as I think of the death, first heard of late last night, of Professor Ken Minogue (whoever called…

Sir Harold Nicolson, diplomat, writer, diarist, politician and gardener, belonged to several parties but never the Conservative one. In fact, he thought of himself as something of a radical and…

Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector on December 16, 1653. This was England’s only experiment with a republic and a military dictatorship (the two are not necessarily the same). It was…

What better way to come back after a slight gap (again) than by two tales of possibly the greatest British Prime Minister of the twentieth century, Margaret Thatcher. One is…

It is a daguerrotype really but they are early photographs so that counts. This came my way from Iconic Photos, a site I had not been aware of. It has…

“Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the…

The death of Lady Soames, née Mary Churchill, at the age of 91 has been announced. While she lived to a very good age and achieved a good many things,…

On September 17, 1939 the war that is known as the Second World War entered its crucial phase though, possibly, this was not recognized at the time. The Soviet Union,…

So spoke the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon. Neville Chamberlain at 11.15 BST on September 3, 1939. After the announcement by Alvar Lidell that the Prime Minister would now address…

Jesse Norman‘s book on Edmund Burke was published last year but I have only just managed to read it and found it very interesting. Last year or this, the subject…

It is Waterloo year, the first that can be fully celebrated since the year itself as 1915 was hardly a time for celebrations. Tory Historian has been doing various things:…

Andrew Roberts’s parallel biography of Napoleon and Wellington, concentrating on the Battle of Waterloo (though the actual battle occupies but a chapter) deals with a number of fascinating subjects, including…

All it takes is a few words and phrases: trenches, barbed wire, mud, water, lost generation. And above all, the Western Front. Because nothing else happened in all those years,…

Early in the afternoon of January 30, 1649, Charles I, who, apparently, insisted on wearing three shirts so he would not shiver from cold, stepped through the window of Whitehall…

As last year’s overwhelming and not always accurate memorials to the outbreak of the First World War slide away into memory, we can start discussing the subject a little more…

Today Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II becomes this country’s longest serving monarch and she is celebrating that day in Scotland, in many ways a very appropriate thing to do. She…