Conservative History Journal

Tory Historian is mortified by neglecting to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar yesterday. Sackcloth and ashes are the order of the day. Instead, time has been spent on reading Gertrude Himmelfarb's The Roads to Modernity, which separates what she calls the three different Enlightenments: British, French and American, and restores the British one to its historic importance.The three can be characterized as Sociology of...

Tory Historian, like so many people, has been often perplexed by people blithely attributing to Burke the saying: "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" or something like it. Perplexed and annoyed, TH has decided to pursue the matter. It would appear that there is no evidence that either Burke or anyone else said that or wrote that, which makes it a non-quotation by any standard. What Burke did say in his 1770 pamphlet, Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents, was something much more apt but also...

October 14, 1066 - King Harold II is slain (possibly by an arrow through the eye) at the Battle of Hastings or Senlac H...

Tory Historian is inclined to the view that the lady who is celebrating her 85th birthday today is the greatest twentieth century Prime Minister though some might disagree. (Feel free to do so.) So, for today, here is video of one of her finest hou...

London Historian reminds all those in or around London that this Saturday there will be no fewer than four guided walks to do with London's rivers, presumably those that are now underneath roads helping to destabilize London's buildin...

Not a war to be proud of and one that might have been avoided with a little more diplomacy on all sides. The second Anglo-Boer War that went on from 1899 to 1902, established Britain's supremacy (more or less) in South Africa, eventually created the Union of South Africa, had enormous impact on domestic politics and blackened Britain's name because of the policy of concentration camps for civilians (later developed to a far higher level by several other countries) began on October 11, 1899 with a Boer offensive into Natal and...

1974 was the year of two elections, both lost by the Conservatives but only one resulting in victory for the Labour Party. In February of that year Harold Wilson had formed a minority government, the first in this country, as the BBC tells, since 1929 and called another election in October when he managed to convert it to a majority of 3. Inevitably, as time went on this, too, became a minority government but it managed to stagger on till the end of its term in 1979. This election also signalled the end of Edward Heath's leadership...

On October 11, 1982 the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's carrack-type warship was finally raised from the seas after a great deal of archaeological and salvation work. She had sunk in the Solent in 15...

Tory Historian has been reading a good deal of Dorothy L. Sayers's works, including the detective stories as well as the various essays. More on that lady and her writings at another time. On the whole, her political writings are the weakest of all but this paragraph in the wartime essay, The Gulf Stream and the Channel published in the collection Unpopular Opinions, made TH smile:All British institutions have an air of improvisation; and seem allergic to long-term planning.Indeed, what else can you expect in a country where...

Tory Historian went to the British Museum this evening as it was late opening. Unusually, the Mediaeval Galleries were open (possibly because there is no big exhibition on at the moment) though the fate of the Hinton St Mary mosaic pavement is still unknown. TH distinctly remembers seeing most of that floor laid out on the landing of the BM staircase. Then it was taken apart and the medallion with Christ's face put back. Where is the rest...

A big milestone in post-World War II restoration: on October 3, 1952 tea-rationing ended. In theory, de-rationing was to start in 1948 but had been somewhat slow. In actual fact, food rationing was not abolished till 1954, after a great deal of popular disconte...

Tory Historian is always thrilled when a previously mysterious document, particularly if it is a map, can be deciphered. The news that the 2nd Century map of Germania by Ptolemy is being deciphered by a group of scholars of various persuasion is very exciting.The map, inaccurate though it is in some detail shows that many German settlements are considerably older than thought before, that there was a great deal of interaction with the Romans...