Germans – not Brits – are the ones who keep mentioning the war
The German ambassador, Peter Ammon, leaves Britain this month and retires after a distinguished diplomatic career as Berlin’s man in…
Sex scandals ain’t wot they used to be
The death last week of Christine Keeler, a central player in the Profumo scandal which helped bring about the end…
The poet who welcomed war
Today, 23 April, the world celebrates the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s presumed birth (and marks with less joy the…
Is Wilfred Owen’s poetry any good?
Wilfred Owen, the poet whose work epitomises the horror of the First World War for most people in modern Britain,…
It’s not just the Tories who ought to fear Ukip – Labour and the Lib Dems should too
Listen! The sound you hear in the damp Tory grassroots as they gather in Manchester for the party conference this…
Amy Winehouse and the 27 Club, by Howard Sounes – review
As an early dedicated fan of the Doors, who ran away from boarding school just so that I could catch my…
Ceremonies of Bravery: Oscar Wilde, Carlos Blacker, and the Dreyfus Affair by J. Robert Maguire – review
The life of Oscar Wilde is so wearily familiar that we assume that there is nothing new to think or…
Atlas of History’s Greatest Military Victories, by Jeremy Harwood – review
Final proof – if any were needed – that Englishmen are not made of the same mettle as their rough,…
A tale of two colonels
This week, March 11th, marks the 50th anniversary of the shooting by firing squad near Paris of the last person…
Richard III should be reburied under Leicester council’s car park
Anyone who watched last night’s Channel 4 Documentary Richard III: The King Under the Car Park will need no reminding…
The Fuhrer was not amused
‘The German sense of humour,’ Mark Twain famously observed, ‘Is no laughing matter.’ Although many Greeks, stretched on the Euro’s…
Let’s not be beastly to the Germans
The question of how Europe stumbled into the horrific abyss of the First World War, the catastrophe which The Economist…
Darkness visible
We all know the names Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belsen, and Dachau. But what about Pechora, Vorkuta, Kolyma and Norilsk? Why are…
Uneasy allies: de Gaulle and Churchill 1940-44
Anyone wishing to understand the tortuous, love-hate relationship between David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy today will find all they need…
Missing the point
The reviewer of Alain de Botton’s books runs a grave risk. For behold what happened to the New York Times…
At the going down of the sun
Vernon Scannell, a poet who fought in North Africa in the Second World War, observed in his poem ‘The Great…
Bonfire boys
We so enjoyed Nigel Jones’s last contribution to Coffee House that we thought we’d invite him back to describe the…
The building of our history
Athens, for all its current woes, still has the Parthenon. Rome has the Colosseum, Paris the Louvre, Berlin the Reichstag,…
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