Conservative History Journal

Tory Historian found another interesting mini-exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, this time a collection of drawings and prints by Richard George Mathews. In the introduction to the exhibition there is an unnecessarily snide comment about the pictures being of idle Edwardians who seemed to find a great deal of pleasure in just travelling.As the drawings are of writers like Kipling, Hardy and Jerome K. Jerome, of the Manager of...

More from Diane Urquhart's book on the formidable Londonderry ladies. This quote is singularly relevant to certain developments in the American presidential election, where the "second-wave feminists" have found themselves on the back foot: There is no question that the marchionesses formed part of a small coterie of political confidantes and hosteses who worked by distinctly personal means in high society to promote their family, direct careers and impact change while their marriage and widowhood would respectively facilitate...

The glamour of the Duchess of Devonshire has eclipsed a very important historical fact. She was not the only lady to have become involved in politics long before female suffrage had become a political fact. Nor were the Whigs the only ones to have powerful and influential political hostesses.Tory Historian is reading Diane Urquhart's "The Ladies of Londonderry", a history of that powerful family through the distaff side. The book follows the story for 150 years, from 1800 to 1959, by which time the role of the political hostess...

The Rosenbergs were really spies? Well, colour me surprised, as they say on the other side of the Pond. It seems that Morton Sobell, who was convicted of espionage with the notorious pair, has now admitted that yes, indeed, he and Julius Rosenberg with the help of his wife Ethel, spied for the Soviet Union.As it happens, the Venona documents and more recent finds in the KGB archives before they were closed to the public again have shown some time ago that there was not the slightest doubt on the subject. But, as the Rosenbergs...

A phone call from the Birmingham Council Leader’s office alerted me to the fact that this is not the first time the Conservative Party has decided to hold its annual conference in Birmingham. The Tory Council Leader wanted to know exactly when and in what circumstances did the previous events take place.Well, naturally, my first port of call was John Barnes, who is a mine of information about the Conservative Party and its history. He knew,...

Tory Historian was somewhat underwhelmed by the news that Keira Knightley, one of our least talented young film actresses was going to play the notorious Duchess of Devonshire in a new film, directed by Saul Dibb, whose claim to cinematic fame (if that is what one means) is the 2004 “Bullet Boy”, which somehow escaped Tory Historian’s attention. Apparently it was another gritty, hard-hitting picture of ghetto youth in the East End. It may...

While looking up something in Andrew Roberts's outstanding biography of the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, Tory Historian came across the following paragraph, which raises a number of interesting points about the role and duty of MPs: When Lord Randolph Churchill emerged as the leader of the movement for Party democracy in 1883 and 1884, Salisbury set his face against anything that he considered liable to fetter the complete independence of...

Well, experimental it may be but the theme is not far off what this blog is about, which gives Tory Historian a good deal of leeway.Wandering round the British Museum, Tory Historian decided to take photographs of two of the choicest exhibits in one of the Greek galleries. One is of the face of the Kouros, the young boy, that is probably from the 6th century BC, when, as the notice said, "when the conventional smile was replaced by a solemn...