As each day passes a new snippet of detail, via an interview with a former aide or a passing comment by an old colleague, sheds more light on how David Cameron came to call and subsequently lose the Brexit Referendum. What is emerging is not a picture of political confidence a...
The latest set of productivity figures show once again the UK lagging lethargically behind comparable countries. Latest figures show the weakest results for two years – and we did not start from a high point. Productivity – how much we produce a thing for a certain cost com...
2019 is a significant year for events and anniversaries. It is 80 years since the Battle of the Atlantic (the longest continuous battle of World War Two) began, 75 years since D Day, 50 years of CASD (continuous at sea nuclear deterrent), Brexit - to name a few. Alongside thes...
As the dust settles around number 10 and the rubble is cleared away from the corridors of the House of Commons the combatants come blinking and coughing into the daylight to find they are still here, nothing has changed – and yet everything is different. Nothing at Westminster...
In his very good biography of George Bush, Destiny and Power, Jon Meacham tells how on winning the nomination of the Republican Party for President of the United States he received a telephone call from the New York businessman Donald Trump asking if he could join the ticket a...
Allen Lane £30 The Reverend Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, Kt., Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, is that increasingly rare thing in Britain of the early Twenty First Century, a public intellectual. As comfortable in front of a television ...
The final say on the terms of Britain’s departure from the European Union will soon end up where this whole complex process began, in Parliament. This is as it should be. Parliament approved the calling of a referendum and it approved the terms. It voted to support the trigger...
Lord Heywood of Whitehall - more familiarly known to us as Sir Jeremy Heywood - served four Prime Ministers in No 10 with great distinction. His early death at the age of 56 robs the country of a very able public servant at a defining moment in its modern history. I met Sir...
Neville Chamberlain – Redressing The Balance Alistair Lexden A Conservative History Group Publication £5 Neville Chamberlain – appeaser, wearer of ludicrous (even by the standards of the day) wing collars, the co-architect with Adolf Hitler of “peace in our ti...
Michael Palin may have come to prominence as a comedian. He has certainly had a good go at being a reasonably serious actor. It is however as a traveller and explorer that perhaps we have come to know him best in more recent times. He has travelled the world for us, bringing t...