Second world war
Demob unhappy
The ex-officers left behind after VE day
Normandy
I am compiling a list of the best black puddings. It began in Spain when I encountered my first morcilla…
Children of Gomorrah
The carpet-bombing of Hamburg killed 40,000 people. It also did good
Letters
Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much…
Light fantastic
The most unusual picture in the exhibition of work by Eric Ravilious at Dulwich Picture Gallery, in terms of subject-matter…
‘You are always close to me’
Hitler’s adoring notes to Unity Mitford – and her family’s campaign to stop my book
Back-stabbing the old warrior
Coalitions, as David Cameron has discovered, are tricky things to manage. How much more difficult, then, was it for Winston…
A truly radical review of business rates is worth more than all the Budget spin
Of all the measures talked up ahead of the Budget, the reannouncement of a ‘radical’ review of the business rates…
Escape to victory
Will politics take second place the day after the election?
Diary
As weather bombs brew in the north Atlantic, I’m roughing it by heading off to Rajasthan, and the literary festival…
In the closet
The Imitation Game is a biopic starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician who broke the German’s Enigma…
High life
Aleko Goulandris is my oldest and closest friend. We met in the summer of 1945, at the Semiramis hotel in…
Signifying nothing
Fury is a second world war drama that plays with us viscerally and unsparingly — I think I saw a…
High life
The time-honoured saying that England’s great battles have been won on the playing fields of Eton is a lot of…
Derring dos and don’ts
Recent years have seen the slim but splendid Patrick Leigh Fermor oeuvre swell considerably. In 2008 came In Tearing Haste,…
An intellectual in intelligence
Shortly after the war began in September 1939, the branch of the intelligence services called MI8, or the Radio Security…
I think my amazing dad has found the secret of a happy life
This week I wanted to tell you about my amazing dad. He hasn’t died or anything. I just thought I’d…
The Forgotten Army remembered
The British who fought in Burma became known as the ‘Forgotten Army’ because this was a neglected theatre of the…
Diary
No, no, no, you don’t want a house abroad — the paperwork, the taxes, the piping, the cost of the…
We shall fight them on the beaches…
Dad’s Army, the sitcom to end all sitcoms, portrayed the Home Guard as often doddery veterans. In one episode, Private…
Hitler’s Valkyrie
Unity Mitford at 100
Letters
Beyond the law Sir: In your leading article of 28 June you make the point that the hacking trial demonstrates…
The kindness of strangers
It is with a heavy heart that I pick up anything to do with the Holocaust. Not because it’s wearisome…
Long life
At the time of the armistice of September 1943, when the kingdom of Italy formally transferred its allegiance from the…
Beware of Brits bearing arms
Twenty-odd years ago, while on holiday in the deep Mani at the foot of the Peloponnese, I got into conversation…
