Conservative History Journal

My end of the year reading is, among others, The Secret World by Hugh Trevor-Roper, a collection of his writings on Intelligence, counter-Intelligence, various ideas behind both as well as personalities involved in wartime secret work. There are articles, letters and the full text of his book on Philby and Admiral Canaris. a good deal of it will have to be written about another time. In this posting I should like to quote from the Foreword by another brilliant historian, Sir Michael Howard, who touches on Trevor-Roper's post...

A very merry Christmas to all the blog's readers and to ensure that it is that, here is a version of the mediaeval carol Gaudete, performed by the choir of Clare College, Cambridge...

The BBC History Magazine asked several historians which history books of 2014 would they rate most highly. The replies made me realize that I had better get reading those books before the 2015 ones start coming out. (As it happens I already noticed a book that will not be published till next year but is in London Library: Boris Volodarsky's Stalin's Agent, a biography of the famous and infamous Alexander Orlov.) But I digress. Back to 2014: Nigel Jones nominates Roger Moorhouse's The Devils' Alliance, a detailed study of the...

This morning I heard the news that my good friend and well known political scientist Dennis O'Keeffe has passed away. He is, I was rightly told, at peace after his appalling suffering. About three and a half years ago Dennis had a very nasty accident and his life since then has been very difficult and constrained, the last couple of weeks particularly so. It would be far too easy to remember that and not the Dennis O'Keeffe of many...

A day much celebrated in countries where children cleaned their shoes yesterday and placed them in the window for St Nicholas (in his many names) to fill either with sweets or a small birch, depending on their behaviour. He is also the patron saint of of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, pawnbrokers and students in various cities and countries around Europe as well as of the Varangian Guard of the Byzantine emperors,...