Ed West writes the Wrong Side of History substack
During the autumn of 1888, as London’s East End erupted in panic following the Whitechapel murders, blame was soon cast on a convenient target: the area’s large number of recently arrived Russian Jews. Initially the killings and mutilations were linked to a Jewish suspect called ‘Leather Apron’, real name John Pizer, a bootmaker known to
‘A century ago, the most potent moral figure in Western society was Jesus Christ. Now it is Adolf Hitler. Perhaps we still believe that Jesus is good, but not with the same fervour and conviction that we believe Nazism is evil. Crosses and crucifixes have lost most of their power in our culture. It is
On June 13, 2023, a mentally ill man named Valdo Calocane went on a rampage in Nottingham, murdering 65-year-old caretaker Ian Coates and two 19-year-old students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar. All three victims were clearly much loved by family and friends, and warm tributes poured out; O’Malley-Kumar had died trying to protect her friend
Two books I read in my teens made me want to be a writer. One, Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, appeared when I was in the third year of secondary school and delivered a style of memoir so warm, so funny and affable that I wanted nothing more than to do the same. The other was Harper
A good pub quiz question in the year 2050 will go something like this: ‘True or false, the “green” in the “Green Party” originally referred to the environment.’ By this point, the etymological origins of Britain’s sectional Islamic party will be as obscure as the relationship between British Conservatives and 17th century Irish bandits. A key
In The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe’s great satirical look at 1980s New York, a white Wall Street trader accidentally ends up in a hit and run involving a black teenager. The cause is taken up by a succession of activists, led by the corrupt race-baiter ‘Reverend Bacon’, all determined to make political capital of
The ‘nothing ever happens’ people seem to be, sadly, correct about Iran thus far, although one hopes that the brutal Islamic Republic might still be overthrown. It’s hard to know what to think, and at times like this we all turn to the experts to give their analysis of what might happen and what might
In Citizens, his account of the French Revolution, Simon Schama wrote how the Jacobins recruited children into ‘relentless displays of public virtues’. These youth affiliates, the ‘Young Friends of the Constitution’, encouraged children to attend sessions at the group’s headquarters in Paris, while ‘throughout France, “Battalions of Hope”, consisting of boys between the ages of
Numerous civil servants have recalled their first encounter with Labour ministers following their election victory last year. After the new rulers of Britain first walked into their departments, and following pleasantries with their officials, ministers asked them for their ideas about how to run the country, to which the confused officials responded: ‘That’s your job,
I’ve just been in New York for the first time in two decades. It’s a young person’s city, it has to be said, but my view was slightly darkened by being far out in Brooklyn and having to spend a lot of time on the subway, perhaps the most depressing public transport network on earth.
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In Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, Britain has a double-edged sword: one of the most anglophile U.S. administrations of all time – but a greater awareness of UK domestic politics. From Lucy Connolly to the recent arrest of Graham Linehan at Heathrow airport, there is much chatter in America about free speech in Britain and
Childminder Lucy Connolly was caring for infants at her home in Northampton on July 29 last year when she heard on the news about the murder of three young girls in Southport. She was upset – like many people – and had seen – again, like many – rumours that an illegal immigrant was responsible.
It’s local election week in Britain (stifles yawn) and a chance to observe the exciting next generation of political idealists. Among those standing for office in Burnley, Lancashire, 18-year-old Maheen Kamran is an aspiring medical student who was ‘motivated to enter politics by the war in Gaza, where she believes a “genocide” is taking place.’
I try to avoid expressing strong opinions on foreign party politics, because I enjoy the luxury of not having to. From an outside perspective, American politics seems dominated by two quite extreme fringes, the only difference being that the mad things believed by Democrats tend to be aped by British elites, and therefore have an impact
In May 1940, days after the Dunkirk evacuation, the Churchill defender Andreas Koureas recalls how the great British war leader was, ‘informed by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, of more dreadful news. Roosevelt had no faith in Churchill nor Britain, and wanted Canada to give up on her. Roosevelt thought that Britain would likely
Diaspora politics is a funny old thing, a form of loyalty that is often coloured by nostalgia and deeply unconnected with the reality back home. It can be especially prickly but also amusing. The growth of ‘cultural appropriation’ as a concept was often driven by third generation East Asians in North America who had assimilated
I visited Mycenae for the first time this autumn. While the ruins of classical Athens can seem almost familiar, the ancient hillfort of a millennia earlier truly feels as though it belongs to the world of gods and heroes, of Homer and the Trojan War. If my imagination hadn’t been destroyed by decades of television,
I took my daughter to Athens for a short holiday at half-term. She is studying Ancient Greek at GCSE, which makes me immensely proud as I didn’t even get that far with Latin. Delphi was wondrous but Mycenae was perhaps the most powerful: there is something about the place, as if one might close one’s
We went to Skye last year on a family holiday – an amazing island, beautiful scenery, so many great people. Towards the end of our trip we visited Dunvegan Castle, ancestral home of the mighty Clan MacLeod. It featured much about the history of the family and its famous sons and daughters, although I noticed that
A few years ago, a conspiracy theory was born, based on the idea that the population of Britain was far larger than the government claimed. This was known to be true because receipts from Tesco, the country’s largest supermarket, gave an indication of how many people were buying everyday necessities, and these sales were too
