Conservative History Journal

Andrew Roberts's parallel biography of Napoleon and Wellington, concentrating on the Battle of Waterloo (though the actual battle occupies but a chapter) deals with a number of fascinating subjects, including the posthumous reputations of the two men, both the various cults that have grown up around each and the far more interesting historical analyses. There is no question that both were interested in how history would judge them....

First, I have to report that yesterday I went to the National Film Theatre to see a rarely (well, hardly ever) shown British film The Reluctant Widow, based on one of Georgette Heyer's Regency novels. Both Wikipedia and IMDB give a bizarre misinterpretation of what happens in the film, even calling the heroine Helena when she is Elinor. It is a little perplexing why anyone should put up a plot summary of a film they had not seen or know...

It is Waterloo year, the first that can be fully celebrated since the year itself as 1915 was hardly a time for celebrations. Tory Historian has been doing various things: going to the National Portrait Gallery exhibition about the great Duke, watching a poor play performed with great zest in a Regency toy theatre in the British Museum where there is an exhibition about propaganda for and against Bonaparte and, as of yesterday, re-reading Andrew Roberts's wonderfully well written Napoleon and Wellington. Mr Roberts has more...

There was much more to the suffragist movement than the WSPU, which was small, less and less influential in the years before the First World War and, many said even at the time, counter-productive in its actions and attitudes. Martin Pugh, the well-known historian of popular politics and women's politics (sometimes these overlap and sometimes they are opposites) says this in the first chapter of his Women and the Women's Movement in Britain 1914 - 1959: The important role traditionally claimed by the Pankhursts has not, so...

The Guildhall Library is not known well enough. Admittedly, it is housed in a hideous building just round the corner from the Guildhall, in itself a fascinating place, but the collection, which is freely available to anyone who wishes to consult it, is stupendous. There really is no other word for it. Among other collections there is an enormous one on food and drink that includes numerous cookery books of past and present. At the moment...