Richard Nixon
Who started the Cold War?
It was America, with its decision to build a global liberal order – not the Soviet Union, with plans to spread communism in Europe, argues Vladislav Zubok
My ringside seat at the Nixon resignation melodrama
American politics seem particularly febrile in 2024. The sitting President has withdrawn from the election, days after his predecessor was…
High life
Gstaad The Speccie arrived just in time for me to read about the rudeness of one Lyndon Johnson, then vice-president,…
The coming of barbarism
There’s a scene in Martin Amis’s 1990s revenge comedy The Information in which a book reviewer, who’s crushed by his…
Elvis and Nixon, the odd couple
If you were called upon to invent the human antithesis of rock and roll, you couldn’t do better than our nation’s 37th president,…
Richard Nixon took the high road in 1960. Donald Trump should now
‘You gotta swallow this one, they stole it fair and square.’ That’s a Republican hack speaking to Richard Nixon, as…
The magic realist
It was not until I went to Harvard in 1988 to take a year out from the Foreign Office that…
Impeachment doesn’t work
So, impeachment it is. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that the House will begin articles of impeachment against President Donald…
Impeachment is regime suicide
The Democratic party and the chattering classes are playing a dangerous game with impeachment. Their are two modern precedents —…
How fear and loathing of Nixon sent Hunter S. Thompson crazy
Hunter Stockton Thompson blazed across the republic of American arts and letters for too short a time. When in February…
50 years after Bobby Kennedy’s murder, the ‘deep state’ still reigns supreme
New York This week 50 years ago saw the assassination of Robert Kennedy, a man I met a couple…
Darth Vader is dirty and it’s not just me that thinks so
Star Wars taught Hollywood how to make children’s films for adults, says Tanya Gold
Super man of legend
On 13 March 2014 a congregation of 2,000 people, including many of the great and the good, gathered in Westminster…
Dick at his trickiest
In the more than 40 years since Richard Nixon resigned as president — disgraced as much by his inveterate lying…
Edinburgh round-up
Propaganda is said to work best when based upon a grain of truth. Ukip! The Musical assumes that most electors…
Long life
On 21 October Ben Bradlee, the famous ex-editor of the Washington Post, died, aged 93. The day before that, on…
Eight presidents
Encounters with leaders of the free world – as a journalist, as a friend, and as a boy running in the hallway
‘I don’t see the wisdom there once was’
Henry Kissinger on statesmanship from Richelieu to Obama
Never say die
Winston Churchill once said of politics that it’s ‘almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous. In war you…
Getting Nixon taped
Simpsons star Harry Shearer on what it takes to play the president
Jack all alone
Ten years ago, a determined historian transformed our picture of John F. Kennedy. Robert Dallek had finally got his hands…
