Nigel Jones is a historian and journalist
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Today is the 110th anniversary of the birth of a former Spectator correspondent who took part in and survived more wars than any other English writer in modern history. Yet he is practically forgotten today because he fought all his life for unfashionable conservative causes. Peter Kemp, the son of a judge in the Indian Raj,
The swing to the right could mean that Bolivia is following Argentina, where President Javier Milei was elected
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‘August for the people and their favourite islands,’ wrote W.H. Auden. My own favourite island in Britain is the Isle of Wight, even though my introduction to it was less than ideal. I was seven years old and had been sent to the island for the ritual initiation for British middle-class males of my generation:
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Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has posed a fascinating counter-factual question about our Prime Minister: what if Keir Starmer rather than Winston Churchill had been Prime Minister in World War Two? Huckabee’s characterisation of him as the arch appeaser may be a little harsh, but it does have the ring of truth The
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Although a historian, until very recently I have been curiously incurious about researching my own slightly peculiar family. How was it, for example, that my grandfather, originally a penniless Welsh peasant, sired a dynasty that in three generations has spread to three continents and includes a squillionaire who founded a multinational club business with 75
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One of the strangest German lives in the post-second world war era closed on 27 July 2025 with the death of Horst Mahler at the age of 89. Mahler’s life epitomises the fatal German tendency for much of the 20th century to embrace extremist politics Mahler’s life epitomises the fatal German tendency for much of
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The clue is in his appearance. The sandy-haired, blue-eyed, 6ft 2in star Jannik Sinner is the world’s No. 1 tennis champion and has just clinched his – and Italy’s – first win in the world-famous Wimbledon tournament. Sinner, the new hero of tennis after his victory over the previous reigning Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz, may
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Reform UK topping the opinion polls and winning local council elections has prompted several leading Tories to defect. But now Nigel Farage’s insurgent party is riding so high that it is getting choosy about which Conservatives it will accept into its swelling ranks. If too many Tories join Reform they will begin to look like
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The death of Norman Tebbit at the great age of 94 marks a real ending of an era. They simply don’t make politicians like Lord Tebbit any more: caustic, high principled, Tebbit was a fighter rather than a quitter. The modern day Conservative party would be a very different outfit if it had a man
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Like millions of others, I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Salt Path, an account of how a penniless and homeless middle-aged couple found their souls by walking the entire length of the rugged 630-mile South West Coastal Path around the Cornish peninsula. I also enjoyed watching the recent film of the book starring Gillian Anderson and
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The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has announced that he intends to create a new third party in the US called the America party. After his own poll on X showed that two out of three favoured the venture, the outspoken billionaire has now put his money where his mouth is and taken the plunge
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Jeff Bezos has brought much tat into the world, along with the undoubted convenience of Amazon’s services. But in at least one respect, he is a man of good taste. In choosing Venice to plight his troth with his lovely bride Lauren Sanchez at the weekend, Bezos picked the best possible location: La Serenissima is
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On Tuesday, as the world teetered on the brink of war in the Middle East, the Financial Times’ front page focused on the possibility that holders of gold from France and Germany were considering moving their investments out of New York due to Donald Trump’s erratic policy shifts and general global turbulence. We are regularly
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An astonishing email from Oxfam, one of Britain’s oldest and biggest humanitarian charities, dropped into my inbox this week. Dramatically titled (in blood scarlet) ‘Red Lines for Gaza’, it demanded that if I am as outraged by the ‘horrors that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza’ as Oxfam is, and I want to do
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I live in a small cathedral city in southern England. The chances of having my mobile phone snatched from my hand by an opportunistic thief, or my Rolex watch wrenched from my wrist by a brutish thug are still mercifully small. But another menace to life and limb has recently emerged here: the mobility vehicle
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Opinion polls are notoriously a snapshot rather than a prediction, but the latest Ipsos survey of more than 1,100 voters should put a huge spring in Nigel Farage’s step, and terrify both the Tories and Labour, who are placed nine points behind the surging populists. The poll gives the highest ever level of support for
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History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now finds himself in precisely the same strategic position as Winston Churchill in 1940: he needs to draw a reluctant USA into a war with a mortal enemy bent on his nation’s destruction. Although some may think it dubious to
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We writers generally live dull and boring lives, tied to our desks painfully wresting words out of mundane experiences: not so Frederick Forsyth, who has died aged 86. Freddie’s life was almost as exciting as the plots of one of his bestselling thrillers Freddie’s life was almost as exciting as the plots of one of
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These days almost everyone you meet is a member of a gym, and instead of attending church every week – as they did in days gone by – they make regular visits to these temples of the body beautiful: the new religion of our times. Yet despite these obligatory bouts of body worship, the general
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The sudden resignation of Reform UK’s chairman Zia Yusuf came as a shock in Westminster yesterday – but is unlikely to do the party much lasting damage. Yusuf, 38, a successful businessman and a former Goldman Sachs banker, said in a terse and huffy statement that working for the election of a Reform government was
