Of the making of books about Churchill there is no end. The latest is the best to date. Andrew Roberts reduces Churchill’s epic life to some 1,100 pages, offering a précis of the great events in which he was involved while drawing on 40 new sources. These include the private diaries of King George VI...
“In delay there lies no plenty” sang Feste, the controlling figure in Twelfth Night. Theresa May would disagree. She has used delay as the vital investment of her government since its formation, and her personal plenty is the dividend. Her plan, as I set out in my July (2018) piece in Chronicles, is to rely...
Britain today presents the exhilarating spectacle of its two main political parties facing imminent collapse. If there is No Brexit, the Tories will split, says Charles Moore, the doyen of Conservative commentary. Labour has already split, with Monday’s announcement that seven MPs have resigned from the party (and eighth has since done so as well)....
The Left’s assault on history comes up with an old favourite—you have to crank up your gramophone by hand to get its flavour, as the record strives to speed at 72 revolutions, wheezing and crackling—with their latest discovery that Churchill was a “villain.” That’s the word chosen by John McDonnell, deputy to Jeremy Corbyn. His...
The Woman in White was Wilkie Collins’s finest novel. That title is on his chosen headstone. I thought of Collins, as I viewed Nancy Pelosi, “clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful” at the State of the Union address. She led a cohort of Democrat ladies, cast somewhat implausibly as Vestal Virgins. You can push symbolism...
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” Richard II’s lament might seem to apply to Theresa May, as she contemplates a near future when the final Withdrawal Agreement has to be submitted to the Commons in two weeks time. There is small prospect that the Commons will support whatever May comes with, since...
“You have delighted us long enough,” said Mr. Bennet, speaking for all of us on the exhausted subject of Theresa May. We had hoped for closure before Christmas, since a Meaningful Vote on May’s Withdrawal Agreement had been promised and this was surely destined for a massive defeat. But the Prime Minister pulled the vote,...
Collective guilt is an invention of the Left, one of their finest. Guilt is of course of primary concern to the individual. Chambers gives it as “the state of having done wrong; sin, sinfulness, or consciousness of it.” In the law courts guilt is charged against the individual or specific individuals, and it is tried...
Alan Clark, that louche and radio-actively incorrect figure, once caused uproar in Westminster by referring to Africa as “bongo-bongo land.” Volcanic outrage erupted on the Left at this hideously racist remark. But on January 8, 2019, the Daily Telegraph reported that in oil-rich Gabon—which is the re-branded French Equatorial Africa—loyalists had thwarted a coup against...
I reviewed Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, for Chronicles (September 2017). I thought it the book of the year, and it stayed on the Sunday Times top 10 non-fiction best-seller lists for almost 20 weeks. There was a precursor, Hasta la Vista Europe! by Col. Walter T. Richmond, which I had also reviewed or Chronicles...
“A Manifesto for Renewing Liberalism” is the title of a recent issue (September 13, 2018) of the house journal of liberalism, The Economist. I read this confessional admission with amazement. Can the editors mean that liberalism needs to renew its vows? It is not like liberalism to be crippled by self-doubt. What went wrong? Of...
Project Fear, the code name for the great anti-Brexit counter-offensive, is still under way but lost its attacking force some time ago. It now survives through a few tropes that have lost their rhetorical teeth, and their power to maul minds. Some instances: 1) Brexit as “crashing out.” Cue: BBC clip of Formula One racing...
The execution of Theresa May has been postponed sine die. It fell to Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Tory rebels (the European Research Group, ERG), to announce the stay of execution. Last week it seemed that she was heading for the firing squad. The 48 letters necessary to trigger a vote of No Confidence...
At this time our thoughts turn to Theresa May’s bunker, which we politely do not name Untergang but cannot put the word out of mind. The scenes from that film are etched on the mind: the soldiers and functionaries are as polite and dutiful as ever, but the Soviet artillery is now creeping up to...
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Within living memory there was once a Conservative Party. It was led by men who had received their M.C. (Eden, Macmillan) and a woman-warrior Brunhild out of Wagner, Margaret Thatcher. Aristocrats, not ermined placemen, were notable in the Party; I once heard the Marquess...
“Boris” is the only British politician universally known by his first name. He was Foreign Secretary, until he jumped ship from Theresa May’s Ship of Fools and is now on the Tory backbenches. Since May’s political life is passing peacefully to its close he is much talked of as a likely successor. What are his...
The crisis in British politics deepens. Everything changed Sunday, when the European Union, without further debate, approved the Withdrawal Agreement that is Theresa May’s work. That Agreement is now set in stone, with no further changes possible for the EU/UK. And the dynamics of politics are revolutionized. The Withdrawal Agreement has been greeted with dismay...
The War of the Tory Succession is now entering its terminal phase. The ultra-loyalist Amber Rudd, badly wounded a couple of months ago, has now after convalescence returned to the Front. She is back in the Cabinet after Dominic Raab became the second Brexit Secretary to pull out from that unfulfilling job. Michael Gove avoided...
“Our expectation hath this day an end.” The dolorous admission of the citizens of Harfleur, that Henry V’s siege cannot be withstood, is the judgment on last Thursday’s meeting of the 1922 Committee, which consists only of backbenchers. Over the previous weekend a very strong campaign had been mounted in the Daily Telegraph stable to...
There is something about “column” that alerts the mind. It is not the same as “crowd,” and is active, purposive. My Chambers dictionary gives for column “a body of troops forming a long, narrow procession,” reminding us that the word is quasi-military. Napoleon’s infantry always attacked in columns. The Honduras column now commanding the news...
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me” was Richard II’s lament. It could be echoed by Theresa May, but she doesn’t echo any wording other than the drab officialese of “We are working to ensure there will be no hard border.” She can keep this stuff going all day, and indeed does. Theresa...
The migrant crisis is principally a deep concern for Europe, with the United States increasingly affected. Canada now joins the list of nations involved in migration issues. The province of Quebec has just held elections, and the Parti Quebecois has been swept out of sight. The winner is the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ), a populist...
I am losing confidence in Vladimir Putin. Time was when I had naive respect for the operations of the KGB or whatever the descendants of the Cheka and Ogpu call themselves these days. Whatever one thought of their moral pond life, these people were serious. Had they not turned any number of British and Americans?...
Theresa May is on death row but files legal appeals that extend her life. She might have taken a mortal hit at the Conservative Party Conference, but Boris Johnson, the Young Pretender (he is actually eight years short of her 64) did not strike the assassin’s blow that many expected. He gave a barnstorming speech...
Failure of a Mission was the title of Nevile Henderson’s book. He had been British Ambassador to Germany (1937-39), and hoped to the end that he could bring peace. He had some heartening talk with Germans in high places, but their rulers had other plans. Last week Theresa May’s visit to Salzburg merited the same...
We need a word for the forces that govern our lives. Establishment, a term popularized by Henry Fairlie in the 1950’s, is common currency. He meant by it “the whole matrix of official and social relationships within which power is exercised.” Ralph Waldo Emerson is held to be the first to use the word in...
Two words of caution before we close down our judgment on the Salisbury poisonings. One: I have never seen what’s in it for Putin. He’s had to take a deal of international flak for a crime committed shortly before the World Cup of football—which was designed to be, and was, a huge propaganda triumph for...
HASTINGS: ‘What news, what news in this our tott’ring state? CATESBY: ‘It is a reeling world indeed, my lord, And I believe will never stand upright Till Richard wear the garland of the realm.’ —(RICHARD III, 3.2.37-40) Catesby is testing out the reaction of Hastings to the question: where will he stand when Richard makes...
Londonistan: The content is in the book’s title. Melanie Phillips, the author, had great difficulty in finding a publisher; no main house would take it, even though she is a distinguished and successful writer, and in the end it came out in 2006 with a minor publisher, Gibson Square. The book’s theme is that Britain...
TORIES FEAR INFILTRATION BY UKIP MEMBERS warned a headline in The Times this week. That journal of record has been slow on the uptake, but this is now a settled trend. People are joining the Conservative Party in large and growing numbers, not because they believe in it—au contraire—but because they reckon a leadership contest...
The War for the Tory Succession is about to resume in all its fury, as the combatants leave their summer quarters and prepare for the fall campaign. The War Cry will be voiced by Boris Johnson, who has a Monday column in the Daily Telegraph paid at £275,000 a year. It is a bully pulpit,...
Entryism: the very word is like a knell. It conjures up the many efforts by Moscow Central to take over British politics. They had successes. In the general election of 1945, two Communist M.P.s were returned to Westminster. They were heavily backed by Moscow, not unreasonably, considering the vast numbers of Communists in France and Italy. But those two had...
History never repeats itself but can offer echoes and rhymes. One rhyme coming shortly is Gladstone’s Midlothian campaign. The old man had retired, deeply wounded by Disraeli’s victory of 1874. He was enticed back by the difficulties of that Government, and Gladstone made a barnstorming attack on the misdeeds of the Ottomans. “The Turks one...
Boris. Only one politician in the land is universally known by his first name. “Boris Johnson” is unnecessary. He is now the center of a political storm, since he wrote in his Daily Telegraph column last week that burka-wearers looked like letter-boxes and bank robbers. They do, actually, but this truthful observation did not save...
On August 8th, 1918, the battle of Amiens began, with stunning success. It was a masterpiece of planning and execution, utterly different from the blood-soaked failures of previous attacks—which included the Kaiserschlacht of July 1918. Amiens was a surprise attack led by some 500 tanks, with infantry following 200 yards behind the creeping barrage. No artillery had opened up before...
“In office but not in power.” That came from Norman Lamont in his resignation speech, on John Major’s hapless Government. The line is famous but misleading, for the implication is that what matters is power, and office is mere trappings. It is not so. For all European nations, political power is a chimera. The leader...
S.O.T. is the latest acronym to come out of Liberal HQ: Save Our Terrorists. The unco guid are outraged because Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, has written to the US Justice to confirm that he has no objection to the American authorities trying two nominally British jihadists for their crimes—and without lodging the standard reservation, that if found guilty they...
Shakespeare contains the cultural history of America. From first to last, Shakespeare is the graph of evolving American values. He early made the transatlantic crossing: It is thought that Cotton Mather was the first in America to acquire a First Folio. Richard III was performed in New York in 1750, and in 1752 the governor...
Does anyone in the media read Alexis de Tocqueville? Many will have gone to college, and some have encountered a reading list that includes Democracy in America. It is the best book ever written on America, and because of its time the best that ever will be written. Tocqueville makes this astonishing forecast: There are...
“England,” said Roy Strong, “is the last ancien regime.” President Trump visited three visible proofs over this weekend. Blenheim Palace was built by a grateful nation to commemorate a day which dawned on France as the greatest military power in Europe and ended with the French commander in Marlborough’s coach together with two other generals....
“Britain is in turmoil” said Donald Trump. He is right. The country is perfectly happy with its World Cup entertainment, and a prolonged heat wave, but the political class is distraught. Theresa May’s grand Plan for Brexit, put forward at Chequers to a locked-in Cabinet, has collapsed following the resignation of the two leading Brexiteers—Boris...
Exeter Goes to Waugh I was lately in Exeter, hoping to see something of the Islamic Centre at the University. As it was a Sunday when I visited, I thought they might have been open for business. But the doors were locked and no access was possible. I did however read a massive plaque outside,...
Lying With Pictures In any shopping mall, on any day, you can see a grizzling kid yearning for the chocolate-covered candy bar that his/her cruel mother is withholding from the distraught child. You can take a photo of this distressing scene but will not expect to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, or whatever touches the...
It is time to ring down the curtain on the troubled rule of Theresa May. May became Prime Minister as the result of a series of flukes, which a scriptwriter would have dismissed as too implausible to work. She was home secretary in the Cameron Government, and cannot have entertained serious hopes beyond retaining her...
‘Divisive’: the Left denounces the term. Good. It means that the enemy is running scared. The Left raises its hands in holy horror at the idea of a community being ‘divided’. But all elections divide voters into pro and con. You cannot hold an election for the Chairman of the Golf Club without fierce passions being involved. Voters are urged...
If Noah Webster was the father of English-language spelling reform, H.L. Mencken was the strong son making good his inheritance. Mencken’s claim was to be the father of the American language. He named it. As with mountains and planets, the one who names is honored with immortality, and The American Language, first published in 1919,...
The Church of England is now a citadel of advanced liberalism. It went over to secularism long ago, and its zealots intensify their hold upon doctrine and practice. The charge sheet includes, but is not confined to, support for the transgender lobby, for illegal immigrants, and for pandenominational movements. The Church smiles upon the “marriage”...
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken . . . ” P.G. Wodehouse reached for Keats to describe his emotions when he read the first of George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman saga. Fraser had already joined the glorious company of famously successful authors who were turned...
“Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” cried the craftsmen of Ephesus. They had heard of the threat to their occupation posed by Paul (Acts 19: 24-29), who was violently against the making of images. Demetrius, a silversmith, had made a just complaint: “So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set...
George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England was published in 1935. It is an exceptionally well-written book and became a cult classic, its haunting title suggesting a mysterious crime, as in a thriller. Dangerfield’s theme was the decay of the civilization created by the British Liberal movement in the years that led up to...