Peter Hitchens

De Gaulle by julian jackson harvard, 928 pages, $39.95 Using pick handles and rifle butts, the police force of one of the world’s most civilized countries surrounded and savagely beat hundreds of dark-skinned men. They then threw them into the beautiful river that flows through a city celebrated . . . . Continue Reading »

Franco:  Anatomy of a Dictator by enrique moradiellos i.b.tauris, 264 pages, $30 Not long after the successful Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944, Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain, removed a photograph of Adolf ­Hitler from his desk in the Pardo Palace in Madrid. He promptly replaced . . . . Continue Reading »

Condemnations of Bishop George Bell served the purpose of a Church trying hard to look decisive and stern about priestly abuse—a problem it has in fact handled very badly.  Continue Reading »

A Song of Ice and Fire by george r. r. martin bantam, 5216 pages, $36.39 No English child will ever again experience, as I did, the joys of Arthur Conan Doyle’s great historical romances The White Company and Sir Nigel, set in the far-off fourteenth century. The remaining . . . . Continue Reading »

Watching this grotesque performance, I was filled (as I so often am these days) with sorrow that so few British children read or study Shakespeare anymore.  Continue Reading »

Hidden in the northern suburbs of Oxford are the last traces of a path first trodden by multitudes of country folk hurrying to see the burning of the Protestant martyrs Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley on October 16, 1555, and trudging home afterward. For some years I lived very close to this track, . . . . Continue Reading »

The British Broadcasting Corporation is not what it officially claims that it is. Continue Reading »

Darkest Hour, the recent Winston Churchill movie, is a rubbish film riddled with historical inaccuracies. Continue Reading »

Lady Chatterley’s Loverby d. h. lawrencemacmillan, 432 pages, $12.99 Six weeks after a London criminal court permitted the unexpurgated publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover on November 2, 1960, a forlorn rearguard action took place in the crimson and gold chamber of the House of Lords, then . . . . Continue Reading »

In Britain it is still rather enjoyable to donate a pint of blood. Continue Reading »