Conservative History Journal

Alas, pressure of time, tasks and duties has prevented Tory Historian from attending the talk on Disraeli given this evening by Lord Hurd and Edward Young, the biography's co-author. Nothing for it: the book will have to be read and reviewed....

One cannot let this day pass without remembering the great event of November 19, 1863 when the Soldiers' National Cemetery was dedicated at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four and a half months after the battle in which the Union army was victorious. The star turn was the Hon. Edward Everett, pastor, politician, former Harvard President, former Secretary of State and Massachussetts Senator, who gave, as was normal in those days, a two-hour...

On October 22 I went to a book launch at the very fine Daunt's bookshop in Holland Park Avenue. The book in question was The Daffodil Party, a debut thriller by the author and quondam editor of Debrett's Handbook and Burke's Peerage, the ever charming and gregarious Charles Mosley (and here). Charles and I had known each other in the past and shared many friends but had lost touch for years. It was the much derided Facebook, whose...

For various reasons to do with ongoing research I have been reading some of the essays in the volume edited by  T. G. Otte, The Makers of British Foreign Policy. The first chapter, an introductory overview of the period "from Malplaquet to Maastricht" (a proper acknowledgement of the importance of both those treaties) and written by Professor Otte has this to say among many other  interesting matters (p. 12): The changing political structure of Britain after the extension of the franchise in 1867, moreover, affected...