Nigel Jones

Berlin is currently convulsed by a culture war – and one all too familiar in a country and capital which, nine decades after World War Two ended, can still never seem to escape the long shadow of its Nazi past. Just a few yards away from that bunker site stands another sombre memorial to those evil days The German capital’s Housing Senator, Christian Gaebler, of the Social Democratic SPD party, has announced plans to demolish the last remnants of a bunker dug beneath Hitler’s long demolished Reich Chancellery building to make way for sorely needed modern apartments.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” wrote Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice, “that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”. The news that the not wholly impecunious Earl Charles Spencer, brother of the late Princess Diana, has tied the knot for the fourth time, proves that at least this one man of good fortune is in want, not of a single wife, but of several of them. Marriage and divorce are an unavoidably expensive business that usually leaves the male partner badly out of pocket Spencer, 61, married his Norwegian girlfriend Professor Cat Jarman, an archaeologist 18 years his junior, in a sparsely attended ceremony in the United States that was notably different from his previous three high society nuptials.

The BBC is in the headlines again – for all the wrong reasons. A TV drama on the fall of Huw Edwards, the corporation’s disgraced former chief news presenter, is due to start tonight. Rather than keep shtum, Edwards has lashed out at Channel 5 for failing to 'check with me the truth', thus ensuring even more bad publicity for the BBC. Yet instead of donning sackcloth and ashes in an effort to atone for its many flaws and follies, the BBC is doubling down on its sins by appointing a new director general who offers more of the same. The appointment of ex-Google boss Matt Brittin as Tim Davie's successor shows that the Beeb is pretending it's business as usual, when only a radical overhaul can save the Corporation.

Eighty years ago today, Winston Churchill coined the phrase 'Special Relationship' to describe the bond between the United States and Great Britain. That label for the close trans-Atlantic friendship, based on a common history, language and culture, and shared political and economic interests, has been repeatedly invoked ever since. Although it has frequently come under strain – notably during the Suez Crisis in 1956, and the Falklands War in 1982 – the US and UK have remained largely aligned. The two countries have broadly sung in chorus from the same song sheet. But can the 'Special Relationship' survive Donald Trump and Keir Starmer? Is it too much to hope that Sir Keir Starmer will follow Eden’s inglorious example?

Donald Trump's undeclared war in Venezuela against the Marxist regime of President Nicolas Maduro has erupted into the open. Trump says the US has captured Venezuela's leader and his wife. In a statement on Truth Social, Trump wrote: 'The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.

It is a cherished myth among Oliver Cromwell’s many critics that our only home-grown military dictator ‘cancelled Christmas’. It gives the Ollie haters yet another reason to loathe the warty-faced old brute, alongside his notorious Irish massacres (of which more later) – but is it true? In fact, there is no evidence that Cromwell initiated or played any personal part in the series of measures clamping down on traditional Yuletide festivities. These were introduced by an increasingly Puritan-dominated parliament between 1647 in the immediate wake of the English civil war, and 1656 – when Cromwell was firmly in the saddle as Lord Protector – though as a strict Puritan himself, he would doubtless have approved.

It is a well known axiom of politics that once you compare your opponents to Hitler’s Nazis you have well and truly lost the argument. But that golden rule seems to have been lost on Tory party chairman Kevin Hollinrake who has rightly come under heavy fire for comparing Reform UK to the Nazis. Hollinrake’s gaffe is a measure of just how worried the Tories are about the rise of Reform Hollinrake posted two images on X showing a black and gold Reform logo promoting the populist party on a football shirt next to a picture of the Nazis’ golden party badge – a special award instituted by Hitler on becoming German Chancellor in 1933 to honour the party ‘alte kampfer’ (old fighters), the first 100,000 loyal Nazi members who joined after the party’s foundation in 1919.

Everyone knows the rhyme about Adolf Hitler. The popular ribald wartime song, beloved of school children, has it that: 'Hitler has only got one ball/ The other is in the Albert Hall/ Himmler is very similar/ And poor old Goebbels has no balls at all!'. The rhyme works, but is it right? A two-part Channel 4 documentary airing tonight suggests the verse about the Nazi dictator might not be entirely fictitious. Now that same science has been deployed to help explain the deeds of the biggest criminal of them all: Adolf Hitler Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator uses an analysis of his DNA to suggest he suffered from Kallmann Syndrome, which can affect the development of sexual organs.