history archive
Highlights from this category
- A lesson from history in tackling terrorism 25 Nov
- The Berners Street Hoax, featuring a dozen chimney sweeps, 2,500 raspberry tarts, numerous pianos and the Archbishop of Canterbury 29 Oct
- Windmills, patriotism and making the green case 14 Oct
- The forgotten liberal hero: Earl Grey 4 Oct
- My six favourite historical posts 13 Sep
Ashdown, Glover and Williams on the party’s history
The latest edition of the Journal of Liberal History caries this account from me of the conference meeting which launched the new history of the party, Peace, Reform and Liberation. You can watch the meeting in full here. It would be a brave person who walked up to Paddy Ashdown or Shirley Williams and told them to [...]
Greek Memories: Compton Mackenzie
Just sometimes governments do an author a favour when they ban their book. Peter Wright’s Spycatcher was turned from an obscure memoir into a front page news bestseller courtesy of an attempted ban. Compton Mackenzie’s memoirs of secret service in Greece during the First World War did not benefit to quite the same extent, but [...]
What did John Stuart Mill really believe?
In this podcast, John Stuart Mill biographer and now special adviser to Nick Clegg, Richard Reeves, explains why he thinks most people misunderstand the main message in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. At under 14 minutes it is well worth listening to in full: Both On Liberty by John Stuart Mill and John Stuart Mill: [...]
Michael Wood’s In Search of Myths & Heroes
Michael Wood’s In Search of Myths & Heroes was a four-part TV series in 2005, looking at the historical truth behind the stories of the Queen of Sheba, Shangri-La, Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece and King Arthur. It is bubbling over with Wood’s trademark TV style – full of enthusiasm, energy, plenty of smiles [...]
The perfect playing cards for politicos
A set of Welsh Political Figures Playing Cards has just been released, featuring hand-drawn caricatures of 54 Welsh figures from across the political spectrum and across the decades. No prizes for guessing who one of the jokers is… There are some lovely pictures in the full set, including David Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald and James [...]
Who said this…?
The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all. The answer is after the jump. Answer: John Maynard Keynes. [...]
VIDEO: Paddy Ashdown, Shirley Williams and Julian Glover on the Liberal Democrats, recession and The Guardian
You can now watch again in full one of the best fringe meetings from the party conference, which saw Paddy Ashdown, Shirley Williams and the then Guardian editorial writer Julian Glover launch a new history of the party and its predecessors, Peace, Reform and Liberation.* Julian Glover gave a very funny speech about his newspaper’s [...]
My favourite… committee name
It is “The Committee for Measuring the Attraction of Hills”, an English 18th century creation, formed at the instigation of then Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne. It was not that he and colleagues had a particular love for hills, if anything the opposite – for the gravitational pull of hills affected sensitive surveying instruments of the time. [...]
Smersh: Stalin’s Secret Weapon – Vadim Birstein documents an untold part of Stalin’s horrors
Thanks to Ian Fleming and James Bond, SMERSH is one of the best known foreign intelligence agencies in the world, with its chilling acronym based on the Russian for ‘Death to Spies’. However, as this book starts out explaining, much of Fleming’s version of SMERSH is wrong. Not only has little accurate information been published [...]
Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey by Rachel Hewitt
Rachel Hewitt’s entrancing story of the birth of Britain’s Ordnance Survey is both a skilful piece of history and also a striking example of the limitations of the profession. It was a dedicated group of people who led the way in mapping, and for all their dedication they were also curiously unfocused, often being distracted [...]
