Conservative History Journal

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On Christmas Day Tory Historian went for a walk through Holland Park and Kensington Gardens, both of which looked splendid in the winter sunshine. Near the Italian Gardens at the Lancaster Gate end of Kensington Gardens there was a memorial tablet just inside the flower beds that TH had not noted before.The tablet was to William Forsyth, quondam Head Gardener of the Royal Park of Kensington Palace (when it was still a royal palace and park)...

It has to be Dickens, whose descriptions (few and far between) have become the epitome of what Christmas celebrations ought to be but rarely are. As Tory Historian has a strong aversion to A Christmas Carol, here is that well-known illustration from Pickwick Papers and the celebration of Christmas at Dingley Dell with Mr Pickwick and the old lady leading an old-fashioned dance. Merry Christmas to all....

Tory Historian merely points out that today is the 205th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Disraeli, later Earl of Beaconsfield, first (and so far only) Jewish born Prime Minister of Britain, the creator of the modern Conservative Party, according to some, and the man who distorted Conservative foreign policy, according to others. Tory Historian hopes that readers will weigh in with commen...

Tory Historian has been a tad busy but has now returned with a few interesting dates to be celebrated or, at least, remembered this week. (Tory Historian also vows to keep this blog up to scratch in the coming year and, indeed, to introduce a few novel ideas, painful though that might be.)December 16 is an important date in the history of the Anglosphere. The Americans mostly remember a certain event in 1773 when a number of colonists improbably...

Tory Historian is, understandably, fond of historical mysteries, which term does not refer to the perennial question of who, if anyone, killed the Countess of Leicester, but detective stories written in modern times about older times. One of the curious developments in the detective story genre has been the ever growing number of mysteries that feature real or imagined figures from the past who solve various crimes. We can only assume that...

December 1, 1919 saw the introduction of the first woman MP to the House of Commons. Needless to say, she was a Conservative. Nancy Astor was not the first woman to be elected to the House - that had happened in 1918, when Constance Markiewicz was elected as a Sinn Féin MP for one of the Dublin constituencies but, in line with party policy, refused to take the oath and was not allowed to sit in the House of Commons. [Both Wiki links need...

A moderately accurate depiction of the first Thanksgiving feast in the City on the Hill. Subsequent events are a different story.As ever, the Wall Street Journal has published the two usual editorials for Thanksgiving Day.From 1620 comes The Desolate Wilderness, Nathaniel Morton's account of the Pilgrims' arrival in Plymouth (the one subsequently in Massachusetts. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full...

This has been a somewhat chaotic autumn but I am now on the last stages of that Journal to be sent off to the typesetter within the next 12 hours (D.V.) So, this is the last call. Anyone out there who promised and article and has not delivered (I have your names down in my little black book) or wants to dash off something now, now, now, do so and send it to me at szamuely_AT_aol.com. Otherwise, you can wait for the developments on the blog (or have an article posted on the secondary on...

The secondary blog of the Conservative History Journal is finally in existence. The aim is to post very long pieces on that with shorter links on this, the primary blog. There may well be future technological developments on the site but warnings will be posted.The first piece on the other blog is a long interview Mark Coalter, a frequent contributor to the Journal, had with Professor John Ramsden in the summer of 2007. The interview has not been published until now. It is now up in its entirety. But just to whet everybody's...

We have received the following note from Tom Hurst who is working on a thesis on Conservative Party rhetoric:“Verbal Combat”: The role of Conservative Party rhetoric, 1979-90.The Ph.D thesis looks at Margaret Thatcher’s public, political rhetoric during the period 1979-90. It is concerned not only with the speeches themselves but also with the process which led to their creation, the manner in which they were disseminated by various media channels and their relationship to government policy. Any information on the areas discussed...

This review is part of a series on books that might be of interest to those interested in conservative history.Was Frank Johnson a conservative? He most certainly was not a Conservative with a capital C, being, as a journalist, of a somewhat anarchic nature. He was, however, one of those who promoted Margaret Thatcher’s free-market policies and being from an East End working class family (his father had been a baker) he had a natural affinity...

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.At the going down of the sun and in the morningWe will remember th...

November 9, 1989 Berlin - the Wall is destroyed by the Peo...

Sometimes one finds definitions of what history is in unexpected places. Well, not that unexpected, as Oleg Khlevnyuk's Master of the House: Stalin and his Inner Circle is a history book that describes the way Stalin gradually and often violently imposed his control on the Politburo while conducting a policy of terror against the population of the Soviet Union.In his Introduction Dr Khlevniuk discusses the various theories of how Stalinism...

It is normally in one’s youth that one prefers rather pretentious novels, particularly if they are written in a beautiful and elaborate style, replete with quotations and abstruse references. How clever one thinks oneself to be in one’s late teens and early twenties, reading this sort of stuff before sneaking away for a quick perusal of thrillers or romances (to be disowned and despised). Later in life one finds those pretentious novels to be utterly dull and unworthy of attention.The one exception to this rule, in Tory Historian’s...

Tory Historian investigated the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum on Friday morning and a separate blog is called for that institution. However, while waiting for a friend and lulled by the beautiful autumnal weather TH took this picture of Clive silhouetted against the Foreign Offi...

The next meeting will take place on November 3, at 6.30 in the Grimond Room, Portcullis House (that's the one that looks like a giant crematorium on the embankment). The speaker will be Ion Trewin, author of Alan Clark: the Biography. All are welcome but you may be encouraged to join the C...

October 21, 1805, Battle of Trafalgar A decisive victory for the Royal Navy that confirmed British supremacy at sea, not to be challenged again in the nineteenth century. Soon after it, at the Guildhall dinner, the Lord Mayor toasted William Pitt, the Prime Minister, as the "saviour of Europe". Pitt's response has gone down in history as one of the finest sentences uttered by a British politician:I return you many thanks for the honour...

Brighton, early hours of October 12, 1984 The IRA's bomb killed 5 people and injured many more. Its intent was to assassinate the Prime Minister and murder as many of the Cabinet as possible. Twenty-five years on the perpetrators are all out of prison and at least one (unrepentant) perpetrator was recently welcomed in the House of Commons, as Stephen Glover indignantly writes....

The Battle of Hastings, which changed English history, was fought on October 14, 1066 with the Normans (who were not actually French but Norsemen) winning a decisive victory. King Harold II killed as the piece of the Bayeux Tapestry above shows.Here and here are some serious accounts of the battle, its causes and outcomes. Incidentally, it was not the last successful invasion of England. Henry Tudor invaded with a French army and some disaffected...

Tory Historian wishes Lady Thatcher, the most important and possibly the greatest British Prime Minister of the twentieth century (Churchill was a great war leader but pretty poor as politicians and something of a disaster as a peace-time Prime Minister), a very happy birthd...

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, fought on October 7, 1571. The Holy League that somehow managed to come to an agreement had a fleet of 206 galleys and 6 galleasses, commanded by Don Juan of Austria, illegitimate son of Emperor Charles V and half-brother of Philip II. The Ottoman galleys were manned by 13,000 sailors and 34,000 soldiers. Ali Pasha (Turkish: "Kaptan-ı Derya Ali Paşa"), supported by the corsairs Chulouk...

As today is the anniversary of the great Victorian poet's death, Tory Historian decided to post a quotation or two. Naturally enough, there will be no references to valleys of death or canons on various sides, as that poem is a little too well known even by people who have no idea of what it is really about. (Incidentally, the same battle saw the charge of the Heavy Brigade, which achieved its aim with the participants coming back more or less intact. No poems were written about that.)Here are a few gems, randomly chosen:He...

October 1, 1949 Tiananment Square, Beijing (or as it was known then, Peking)After a long and ferocious civil war during which Mao frequently turned on his own followers if their support for him was not quite fervid enough, the Communists had won. Mao Zedong proclaims the founding of the People's Republic of China, arguably the most destructive, oppressive and murderous of the twentieth century's appalling regimes. The Daily Telegraph gives...

I have to confess to finding Facebook quite useful and interesting but I don’t know what Tory Historian would think of that. The friends and contacts one makes are more varied and, above all, further flung in the world than they would be in the ordinary course of existence. After all, is it any different from those correspondences so dear to the heart of all intellectuals and wannabe intellectuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth century?...

This was Open House week-end in London, a very worthwhile enterprise that appears to be losing some momentum, getting bogged down in badly written prose and trendy jargon like sustainability (meaningless in the context) as well as self-congratulation.The programme this year was thinner than ever before with many much loved buildings missing and whole boroughs opting out.Nevertheless, Tory Historian found two fascinating buildings, neither...

Today is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Dr Samuel Johnson, poet, essayist, critic, journalist, biographer, lexicographer and, above all, one of the greatest Tories. This is a preliminary posting, to remind readers of the event. There will be more. Tory Historian cannot let an anniversary like this pass by without writing a good deal on the subje...

September 17, 1939 Soviet forces invade Poland without any declaration of war and quickly defeat the retreating army, taking many thousands of prisoners of war. A good many of them were subsequently "executed" in various camps.A delightful picture full of ironies. General Heinz Guderian, the outstanding German panzer commander shares a joke with the Soviet General Semyon Krivoshein at the joint parade held by the two invaders in Brest on...

There is a posting in the pipeline (and what a painful position that is to be in) about Sir Jack Drummond, nutritonal scientist, public servant and historian of food in his ground-breaking "The Englishman's Food".In the meantime, as a link between the postings about the outbreak of World War II and the Drummond piece, here is a link to an article published in Time magazine about meat shortage and food rationing in Britain in January 1941.It talks about Lord Woolton, a man about whom Tory Historian will write again and describes...

September 11, 2001 New York CityDecember 29, 1940 London...

Back on line and on my own computer. It is a matter for rejoicing but it does mean that there has been a serious gap in the work on the Journals. This will be resumed instantly but not all the articles that have been promised have arrived. I hope to see the missing ones in the next few da...

September 3, 1939 Introduced by the great Alvar Liddell, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announces that the United Kingdom and the British Empire are now at war with Germany. I am speaking to you now from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them by 11o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you that no...

The Conservative Party website is running a Conservative Party history week, which is to be welcomed, as too many members of the party have no idea of where they, as an entity, have come from.There is a short film about the party's development, concentrating on the progressive aspects, which is an important part of the history.There are also blogs that deal with various subjects that Tory Historian will probably fisk at some later sta...

September 1, 1939, Germany invades Poland...

There are only three second-hand bookshops left in Charing Cross Road, though there are a few more in Cecil Court that leads from that road to St Martin's Lane. This is a grave problem for those of us who are addicted to second-hand books and the shops that house them. I hate to have to admit to it but buying them on the net without the happenstance aspect to the whole procedure is not the same.Still, there is Any Amount of Books, open most days till 9.30 in the evening, somewhat ramshackle inside and with boxes of cheaper paperbacks...

The Kremlin, August 23, 1939 though the document was dated August 24. Molotov signs the infamous Nazi-Soviet Pact, secret protocols and all, thus making World War II inevitable. It took another week for the Germans to invade Poland with all that was to follow. It took another three and a half weeks for the Soviet Union to invade Pol...

Tory Historian was very excited at the news, which, for some reason was only on AFP, in English and in French, that a cache of early twentieth century films were found in Poland, in a parish building in the city of Sosnowiec.There were these two metal boxes, left by the film buff priest, Father Jerzy Barszcz, who had been collecting films since just after World War II until his death in 2004. Or so it appears from the story. There are a...

After far too long an interval in posting (memo to self: must do better) Tory Historian can think of nothing better or more important than post a paragraph from Edmund Burke's famous acceptance speech to the electors of Bristol, delivered November 3, 1774. This paragraph is very apposite to the debates that are going on now about the role and task of MPs though we must remember that the question of renumeration did not arise at the time. Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live...

Tory Historian is not really one of the shooting fraternity but has known many people who are. Therefore, the Glorious Twelfth (which is not called that by anybody who actually shoots on that or any other day) has to be marked on this blog.It seems that the beginning of it lies in the Game Act of 1773, which laid down that the hunting (or shooting) season for red grouse should run from August 12 to December 10. Wikipedia, which gives a reasonable summary, gives the Game Act of 1831 as the start of the tradition. It certainly...

Looking for something different Tory Historian found these two excellent sayings by Charles de Montesquieu, well, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, to give him his full name, who lived from 1689 to 1755 and was a man of many parts, as well as author of "The Spirit of the Laws", a crucial political text. The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.There is no crueller tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield...

This review is part of a series on books that might be of interest to those interested in conservative history. “In Denial” by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr deals with the shock the American historical establishment received when the brief opening of the KGB’s archives and the publication of the Venona documents showed that the accusations about the CPUSA and Communist infiltration in the American government were true; it shows the...

Not a round date but here is a slightly unusual photograph connected with Hiroshima. This is an aerial view of the USAAF North Field on Tinian Island, from which the B-29 bombers flew. That included the ones to Hiroshima on august 6, 1945 and Nagasaki 1945. The picture comes courtesy of DefenseImagery.mil, the Department of Defense's prime image website that is open to all.Hiroshima and Nagasaki bring out a great deal of wailing and gnashing...

Some had been forgotten:August 19 - 21, 1991 - abortive Soviet coup aimed at reversing developments but the result is the final collapse of the Soviet Union, the "greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century" according to Prime Minister Putin and, no doubt, various historians like Professor Eric Hobsbawm;August 7 - 16, 2008 - war in Georgia when Russia invades actual Georgian territory;Tory Historian is not sure the last one is as important as the others in the grand scheme of things but it might yet be. And another...

Ah yes, Tory Historian is told, the silly season. Nothing ever happens in late July and August. Oh no? Well how about a few random events from the twentieth century?July 23, 1914 - Austria-Hungary delivers an ultimatum to Serbia with ten extremely difficult demands;July 28, 1914 - when Serbia acceded to eight of the demands, Austria-Hungary declared war because of the remaining two;July 29, 1914 - Russia orders partial mobilization;July 30, 1914 - Germany orders mobilization;August 1, 1914 - France orders mobilization; Germany...

Today is the anniversary of the Treaty of Breda that brought an inconclusive ending to the Second Aglo-Dutch War and a temporary halt in the hostilities between England, the United Provinces, Denmark and France, who immediately started invading the Spanish Netherlands.Let's face it, for most of modern European history it was France, not Germany (which did not even exist till 1870) that was the "neighbour from hell".While the Dutch were victorious around Europe and in Asia, England won in North America with four new colonies,...

Tory Historian is very fond of St Pancras station, its combination of exoticism with the Eurostar trains and the longest champagne bar in the world with the more homely commuter trains and the large shopping, eating and drinking area.One of the best sights is this charming statue to Sir John Betjeman, poet, writer, campaigner and all-round Good Egg, besides the Eurostar trains. Around the statue it is written: Sir John Betjeman 1906 - 1984,...