In one of the opening scenes of Evelyn Waugh’s Men at Arms, the central character Guy Crouchback vacates his Italian castle in 1939 once the approaching conflagration can no longer be ignored. “He expected his country to go to war …
When will we forget the Second World War?
The Second World War is Great Britain’s great daddy issue. It is with us from infancy, squatting immovably as a formative weight and wound. We either resent its example or strive to match it, coughing up Blitz spirit and slapping …
Why Ukraine’s offensive has stalled
Whenever Russian missiles strike a Ukrainian city, or Kyiv’s drones target a building in Moscow, the attacks are inevitably followed by the sort of media coverage worthy of a Blitz raid. Yet generating headlines is just about their only achievement: …
Japanese pacifism is dead
Japan is on manoeuvres. The country for so long tethered — or protected, according to your point of view — by the “pacifist” constitution imposed upon it by the occupying Americans after the Second World War may be about to …
Why Russia retreated from Kherson
The withdrawal of Russian forces from Kherson back across the great river Dnieper was not inevitable — it was entirely voluntary. Yes, they were performing poorly under Ukraine’s accurate artillery fire, but they could have been ordered to hold on …
Was Prince Philip a womaniser?
Was Prince Philip a player right up until the end of his life? That’s the implication made, albeit discreetly, in the latest series of The Crown, which depicts the Duke of Edinburgh’s appreciation for Penny Romsey (later Countess Mountbatten) during …
Italy still mourns Mussolini
One hundred years after seizing power, Benito Mussolini still has his admirers. As many as 4,000 black-clad fascist sympathisers marched to the Italian dictator’s crypt on Sunday to mark the centenary of his March on Rome. Cries of “Duce, Duce, …
The twilight of the Disney princess
On Sunday, as hundreds of thousands queued to see the mortal remains of our Queen lying in state, I stood in a shorter queue, to see a different queen in the flesh. The occasion was my daughter’s long-planned birthday excursion …
The creative power of blackout Britain
Women shiver at their desks, wrapped in quilts. A pub is lit, just about, by candles — not because it’s Valentine’s night, but because the lights don’t work. Actors at London’s Royal Court Theatre, decide that the show must go …
Ideology has poisoned the West
A century has passed since William Butler Yeats sensed the stirrings of a “rough beast” with a gaze “blank and pitiless as the sun”. That beast’s apocalyptic hour has come around again, its rebirth announced by the galloping horsemen of …
Germany’s arrogant pacifism
In Germany, this was a Victory in Europe Day like no other. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Berlin’s entire postwar consensus has crumbled. Previously settled policies and cherished beliefs have dissolved in this new reality: the brutal return of war to …
How magicians are fighting Putin
Last Wednesday at 3.33am, Moscow time, as the new moon waxed in the sky, the resistance to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine took the form of a mass binding ritual: a spell to frustrate and confound the Russian leader, to be …
How war radicalised Germany
“Death is a master from Germany.” The line is from Paul Celan’s Deathfugue, a poem which tried to express the abject horror of the Nazis’ genocidal war in Eastern Europe. Celan, a Jew, was a son of Chernivtsi, then a …
Kyiv will rise again
As winter came to the city of Kyiv, its people waited for the cataclysm. For months the tension had been mounting. They had seen what became of other cities that defied the Mongols, but their governor had refused to surrender, …
The Age of Elizabeth Windsor
The 70th anniversary of the Queen’s accession to the throne represents a strange juncture in the country’s history. Her Majesty’s stoical endurance through national and personal tribulation has cut deep. There has not been a life of monarchical duty continuously …
