Conservative History Journal

Tory Historian has been reading the small World's Classics edition of James Woodforde's diary, entitled Diary of a Country Parson and fell to wondering whether any research has been done about the country parson and his family. The heavily edited tiny book is fascinating and frustrating in about equal measures. Well, Mr Google is everyone's friend, even Tory Historian's. There is, thankfully, a Parson Woodforde Society, which appears to...

This comes from the Preface to David Gilmour's excellent biography of Curzon:Curzon's reputation thus survived the first two verdicts of history. In the early 1930s, however, Lord Beaverbrook launched an assault on it that lasted for nearly 30 years and ensured its virtual destruction. In a series of racy and tendentious books the newspaper tycoon directed a crescendo of abuse culminating in the allegation that his victim had been 'inconsistent,...

Tory Historian's absence has been occasioned in part by interested reading about the debates in the Conservative Party in the early twentieth century (of which more in future postings). The return was going to be a happy one, perhaps with a note about the fact that today is the great Benjamin Franklin's 305th birthday. Instead, TH is furious. How can one not be when one of the main Sunday newspapers publishes a sycophantic interview with Eric Hobsbawm, the historian who has been a member of the CPGB all his life, who still regrets...

Arthur Boutwood's book naturally led Tory Historian to the work of E. H. H. Green, the historian of the Conservative Party and its ideas, who died tragically young in 2006. His Ideologies of Conservatism denies that the Conservative Party is a party with no ideology. Its beginning, much to Tory Historian's delight, is an account of the fierce ideological battles waged within the party when it appeared to be in crisis in the early years of the twentieth centu...

When was this written?There were, of course, Conservative policies, but there was no productive Conservative thought, certainly no systematized Conservative thought. The changes which created our modern political world were governed by conceptions which were not Conservative, and were brought about by forces which owed none of their strength to Conservative ideals. The answer is 1913 in a book called National Revival - A Re-statement of Tory Principles by Arthur Boutwood, apparently anonymously though it was hardly a profound...

Tory Historian is aware that "awesome" has become one of the most fashionable slang words meaning, roughly speaking, "pretty good". This is rather a pity as the word should be used only when describing people like Captain Frederick Gustavus Burnaby (1842 - 1885), modestly described by Wikipedia as a "traveller and soldier". And so he was, as well as a superb writer of two classics of travel literature: A Ride to Khiva and On Horseback Through...

Tory Historian rarely makes predictions (better not say never but hardly ever will do). One reason is the silliness of predictions found in many books. Books on politics, particularly those that deal with slightly volatile regions are notorious - the vagaries of publishing are such that by the time a book comes out everything would have succumbed to events. Even more entertaining is reading confident predictions made by critics of yore. Take H. Douglas Thomson's Masters of Mystery, which TH finished on New Year's Eve (with some...