Conservative History Journal

Tory Historian wanted to see the year out with some spectacular birthday or anniversary. Nothing much seems to have happened on December 31 and the birthday of Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, hardly seems worth celebrating. So let us look to December 30, the birthday of one of the finest poets and writers, Rudyard Kipling. Happy 145th birthday, Mr Kipling. Happy New Year to all readers....

History Today enters into its 61st year with an interesting looking iss...

Tory Historian has just finished another book that might be of interest to people who are interested in conservative history and its ramifications. The Third Marquess of Londonderry and his second wife, Frances Anne Emily Vane-Tempest, une femme formidable according to all including Disraeli, spent several months in Russia in the winter of 1836-7, visiting St Petersburg and Moscow as well as a few smaller places, attending many balls, dinners...

It has been said that the 1920s and 1930s were the Golden Age of the detective story. Tory Historian has always found that rather hard to accept as all too many of those novels are either completely unreadable or utterly preposterous, such as the adventures of Colonel Gore. The same period may be said to be the Golden Age of the essay, short, long or full-volume length as H. Douglas Thomson's Masters of Mystery is. Mr Thomson also edited a collection of Mysteries in 1934, which included every well known name and some rather...

Tory Historian has been a little remiss with postings recently so an early new year resolution is in order. In the meantime a very Merry Christmas to all readers of this bl...

Tory Historian admires Daniel P. Moynihan for many reasons, not least for being the sort of Democrat that seems to be extinct now. This quotation that dates back to 1969 merely confirms that.Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.Of course, he uses the word "liberal" in the modern American sense. A true old-fashioned liberal has a very healthy skepticism of anything to do with government,...

One can pick up very interesting and somewhat random information from detective stories. Tory Historian was re-reading Dorothy L. Sayers' novels and, indeed, reading her essays. One of the early Wimsey novels was The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, whose plot revolves round the problem of who died first, General Fentiman or his sister Lady Dorland.The General's body is discovered in the Bellona Club in the early evening of November 11. Wimsey is asked to find out when he had died but immediately discovers a number of odd...

On the whole Tory Historian would prefer not to have the picture of London's Mayor at the top of this website. The organization, the King James Bible Trust, is entirely praiseworthy and TH hopes that many readers will look at the site, bookmark it and note whatever events it organizes to promote a wider knowledge of the book that changed the Anglosphere's understanding of the world and religion. Can one really think English-language literature...

Tory Historian was fascinated by this news item about archaeological excavation at Towton in Yorkshire, the site of one of the bloodiest battles on English soil, fought between the Yorkists and Lancastrians in 1461. There are the usual arguments about the numbers killed and whether it was worse than Marsden Moor of the Civil War. But that is not the fascinating news. It would appear that archaeologists together with a metal detectorist [sic] have found bronze barrel fragments and very early lead shot. This will, one hopes, be...

I am now rounding up all possible contributions for the Conservative History Journal (with many thanks to those who have sent theirs). So, any mo...