Imperial war museum

Does it matter if Prince William believes in God?

The Prince of Wales seeks to assure us that, as a friend puts into his mouth, ‘I might not be at church every day, but I believe in it.’ That formulation does not necessarily mean he believes in God or the doctrines of the Church of England. All it means is that he believes in the efficacy of the C of E and will dutifully fulfil his future role as its Supreme Governor. Actually, that is all we need to know. His great Tudor predecessor said she did not want to ‘make windows into men’s souls’; even kings are only men. The important thing, from a constitutional as opposed to a

The Imperial War Museum’s betrayal of history

The news that the Imperial War Museum is closing Lord Ashcroft’s Victoria Cross and George Cross gallery is sadly not a great surprise. It’s the latest act in the ‘wokeification’ of this once outstanding museum. Writing in the Daily Telegraph last week, Lord Ashcroft said that the IWM didn’t even have the ‘courtesy to inform’ him of the closure. Rather, it issued a statement in which it thanked him for his generous 15-year loan but said the exhibition will shut permanently on 1 June. The reason, explained the IWM, is to create new space ‘to allow us to share more stories of conflicts that are within many of our visitors’

War games do something seriously unpleasant to our brains

Three years ago, I killed several thousand people over the course of a single weekend. Late into the night, I ran around butchering everyone I saw, until by the end I didn’t even feel anything any more. Just methodically powering through it all, through the wet sounds of splattering heads, bodies crumpling, shiny slicks of blood. I thought I was past caring. But when I finally went to bed, I couldn’t sleep, and in my dreams I was haunted by all the men I’d killed. I saw their brains exploding, again and again and again. In my defence, I’d had a bad week. It was December: a grotty English winter,

The best food podcasts

You have to hand it to Ed Miliband. After bacon sandwich-gate, he might never have eaten in public again, but there he was, wolfing down cod and chickpeas, eggs and Za’atar on the chart-topping podcast Table Manners with Jessie Ware. Presumably he thought that audio would be a fail-safe medium in which to redeem himself. No cameras, no aggressive questioning (the show is co-hosted by singer Jessie Ware and her mum Lennie), no risk. Suffice it to say he underestimated this one. An early part of the conversation, in précis, ran like this: ‘What’s your go-to dish?’, ‘I’m a recipe-box follower and a recipe follower.’ ‘Which recipe books?’, ‘That’s a