Book review: Little Englanders: Britain in the Edwardian Era, by Alwyn Turner

There is a charming Edwardian photo on the wrap-around cover of Alwyn Turner’s latest book. The picture was apparently taken at the St Giles Street Fair in Oxford around the time the period covered in this book came to an end, i.e. around 1910, the year in which King Edward VII died. It is essentially a busy crowd scene. The rear of the shot is filled with dozens of heads disappearing into the distance but the people in the foreground are clearly visible. Some are clearly aware of the camera and are smiling or looking self-consciously at it. A few of them would be clearly identifiable to anyone who knew them well. It’s unlikely of course, but if you knew anyone living in Oxford at the time, you might spot someone you recognise. The parents, grandparents or great-grandparents of anyone reading this might well be standing there.

Virtually everyone in the picture is wearing a hat of some sort. Most of the males are wearing cloth caps, although a few are wearing boaters or the odd bowler. Although there are one or two hatless boys visible, there are no women without hats at all. To me, the picture evokes memories of films set in the era such as Mary Poppins or The Railway Children. Both those films were made in the Sixties, when the Edwardian era was as much within living memory as the Sixties are to us today. Given that the oldest person living in Britain at the time of writing was born in 1909, we can be certain that everyone in the picture is now dead, in most cases probably for a long time. Some will have died in the world wars, some in the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Some will have lived to witness Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon on TV in 1969. None would have expected to be on the cover of a book, published in the year 2024.

This book is their story. Not their story specifically, but the story of the people of the Edwardian era (1901-10), which can be extended up to 1914. Author Alwyn Turner has most covered the more recent decades in his latest books but here he explores a period tantalisingly beyond the reach of living memory. He focuses heavily on many of the more colourful figures of the time such as the murderer Dt. Crippen (pictured above) and the Liberal MP and fraudster, Horatio Bottomley, who inspired Kenneth Grahame to create the character of Mr Toad. We learn that Edward VII owned a golf bag made entirely from the skin of an elephant’s penis. Filled with lots of surprising nuggets of trivia about the details of Edwardian life, this is never less than an enjoyable and entertaining read.

Book review: Little Englanders: Britain in the Edwardian Era., by Alwyn Turner. Published by: Profile Books

Book review: British General Election campaigns, 1830-2019

The story of the General Election of 2024 or 2025 is still largely unwritten. Even the date of it is still unknown although we do know it can be no later than January 2025. Are the opinion polls right in predicting a victory for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party or will Rishi Sunak pull off an unexpected Conservative victory? Will the result be a landslide as it was for New Labour in 1997 and 2001 or a Hung Parliament as occurred in 2010 and 2017? Will the SNP vote collapse? Will Reform UK split the Tory vote? Will the Liberal Democrats make a comeback? Only time will tell.

This book takes us through the last fifty British General Elections starting just before the Great Reform Act of 1832 to Boris Johnson shattering the Labour “Red Wall” in December 2019. Each election is covered in an essay by a different author. Michael Crick covers Edward Heath’s unexpected 1970 victory, Peter Snow discusses Margaret Thatcher’s post-Falklands 1983 landslide and so on.

As we generally have never had fixed term parliaments, sometimes elections have become frequent, especially when things are unstable. In 1910 and 1974, there were two General Elections within the space of a year. There were five during the politically turbulent 1830s and four apiece during the uncertainties of the 1920s, 1970s and 2010s. On the other hand, Prime Ministers also went to the country four times during the 1950s, a period usually remembered as being relatively placid. And there were no elections at all between 1935 and 1945 as a result of the Second World War. The 1945 contest saw many thirty-year-olds, having survived six years of war, getting the opportunity to vote in a national elections for the very first time.

Turnout has varied, peaking at 86.8% in January 1910 (at the height of the furore over David Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget”) but reaching a low of 53.4% in 1847. No election has enjoyed a turnout of more than 80% since the Churchill comeback election of 1951. No election has received a 70% turnout since the year of Tony Blair’s first great landslide in 1997. None of the General Elections held in the 20th century ever saw turnout ever drop below 70%. Thus far all six of the elections held in the 21st century have done so. Only 59.4% turned out to ensure Tony Blair beat William Hague in 2001. 68.8% voted in the election which saw Theresa May beat Jeremy Corbyn in 2017.

No party has ever won a majority of votes cast in any of these General Elections except for the Conservatives in 1886 (51.4%),1900 (50.2%) 1931 (55%) and the Liberals (previously known as the Whigs) in eleven elections between 1832 and 1880, a period during which they dominated a political environment in which there was only one other political party. Seats wise, the Tories peaked, winning 412 seats in the 1924 vote which defeated the first ever Labour government but won the least seats (157) in the year of the 1906 Liberal landslide. The Liberals, in contrast, won the most MPs they ever won in the first ever election in which statistics are available: 441 in 1832. They won just six MPs three times during the lows of the 1950s and achieved that number again in 1970. The newly formed Labour Party, meanwhile, won just two seats in the first election of the 20th century (1900) before hitting their highest ever figure of 419 in the very last one (1997).

In the first 22 of these 50 General Elections, no women were allowed to vote at all.

Statistics aside, some elections have had very surprising outcomes: few predicted Attlee’s Labour landslide in 1945, Ted Heath’s win in 1970, Harold Wilson’s return in early 1974 or John Major’s victory in 1992. Few observers expected Cameron to win a majority in 2015 or that Theresa May would lose it again in 2017.

In the TV age, some politicians have thrived under the glare of the cameras, see Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair. Some conspicuously haven’t: see Edward Heath, Michael Foot, Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband. The 2010 election remains the only contest to be significantly enlivened by a round of televised leadership debates. At the time, these greatly boosted the profile of Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg. Yet ultimately the brief wave of “Cleggmania” seemed to yield his party no electoral advantage whatsoever.

Some campaigns have seen our leaders laid low: Churchill’s “Gestapo” speech. Thatcher’s wobbly Thursday. The Prescott punch. Gordon Brown’s “bigoted woman.” Some have threatened to be blown off course by random unexpected factors: the Zinoviev Letter. Enoch Powell’s last minute defection. The War of Jennifer’s Ear. The Foot and Mouth outbreak. The Icelandic volcanic ash cloud.

Some elections end up being defined by memorable slogans: Safety First. Let Us Face The Future Together. Labour Isn’t Working. Get Brexit Done.

What will define the coming contest? We will soon find out. In the meantime, this volume offers plenty of fresh insights into the battles of the past.

Book review: British General Election campaigns, 1830-2019: The 50 General Election campaigns that shaped our modern politics. Edited by Iain Dale. Published by Biteback. March 26th 2024.

Podcast review 3: Political Currency

What is it?: A decade ago, they were fierce political rivals. George Osborne was the Tory Chancellor who presided over austerity, while Ed Balls, the then Shadow Chancellor was his staunchest opponent. Today, both men are out of parliament and get on reasonably well. Here, they discuss politics in an hourlong weekly podcast released every Thursday. A shorter EMQ (Ex-Minister’s Questions) version of the podcast appears every Monday, in which the two men answer listener questions. Occasional extra podcasts will appear in the event of something interesting happening such as Osborne’s old friend and ally, David Cameron being appointed Foreign Secretary or a Budget. Balls’ and Osborne’s backgrounds ensure there is a strong economic focus to the programme.

History: Political Currency was launched in September 2023 by Acast. As of March 2024, there have been over forty episodes released. I have listened to roughly half of them.

Format: Although it has not yet succeeded in toppling Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart from the top of the UK podcast tree, Political Currency actually scores over The Rest is Politics in a number of ways:

1) It has a kickass theme tune with extracts from Balls and Osborne’s more colourful political exchanges played over the top of it.

 2) Balls and Osborne really were political rivals back in the day. They actually genuinely seemed to dislike each other. In contrast, The RIP team were never truly rivals: Stewart’s career as an MP only really began after Campbell’s heyday was over.

3) Although both opposed Brexit and are reasonably sane and centrist on most things, Osborne really is still a bit of a Tory (he claims to personally like Liz Truss, amongst other odd things). A common criticism of TRP is that there is not enough genuine political difference between the two men as while Campbell (like Balls) is still clearly in the Labour camp, Stewart is clearly no longer a Tory. This is not the case here.

I currently listen to both TRIP and this regularly, but I suspect TRIP still has the edge. This is probably partly because Osborne basically isn’t as likeable as Rory Stewart is. While there are certainly many far more horrifying beasts walking around the Tory jungle, it’s difficult to feel as  much warmth towards Osborne, a man spent the Cameron years, cutting budgets and closing libraries as it is for Stewart, a man whose decade in politics really did seem to be a based around a frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to really make a positive difference.

The Rest is Politics perhaps covers international affairs more thoroughly than Political Currency which tends to focus more heavily on financial matters. Focusing on economics certainly isn’t a bad thing at all. But personally, I am less interested in those bits, so from my point of view the fixation on economics does slightly count against them.

There is usually one dominant partner in any podcast double-act and Osborne always feels like the main man here. Ultimately, both he and Balls are interesting and intelligent men with genuinely interesting political careers behind them. There is a threat to the future, however. Balls is married to Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper. Would Cooper’s appointment to a senior position in a future Labour government render Balls’ position on the podcast unsustainable?

Only time will tell.

Book review: Family Politics, by John O’Farrell

What would you do if your son suddenly turned into a Tory?
This is the crisis which confronts middle-aged Hastings couple, Eddie and Emma, in this, John O’Farrell’s first new novel since 2015.
For Eddie and Emma are both ardent, lifelong card-carrying Labour Party members. Eddie even harbours ambitions of office: he is already on the local candidate’s list and has high hopes of running for parliament. The news that their son, Dylan, has returned from university, a sudden and enthusiastic convert to the party which brought us austerity, Brexit and the disastrous but mercifully brief premiership of Liz Truss, thus comes as something of a shock to them.
O’Farrell made his name writing the hilarious comic memoir, Things Can Only Get Better and I suspect Tory supporters (currently something of a minority breed) may enjoy this book rather less than the rest of us. But the novel is fairly even-handed and O’Farrell is happy to poke fun at Eddie and Emma’s Labour-supporting ways too. Otherwise, with the General Election looming, this is a funny, good-natured book, full of solid jokes and with an underlying message emphasising the importance of recognising the importance of tolerance and learning to live with people who have political views different to our own.

The Great Royal Baby Race of 1819

George III (1760-1820): 15 children. Grandchildren proved less straightforward.

There are many different measures to decide what makes a good king and what makes a bad one. Certainly, one way to be a good one is by securing the survival of your own royal dynasty. And on these terms alone, King George III should have been a champion.

Not only did manage to stay on the throne for longer than any other British male monarch (sixty years, from 1760 until 1820) but he had no less than fifteen children to continue the family line. In fairness, his wife, Queen Charlotte really deserves most of the credit here. She did after all do the difficult bit of giving birth to these children, not George.

By the second decade of the 19th century, however, when the Royal couple were very old (and, in the King’s case, mad), it was clear something had gone badly wrong somewhere. Three of the fifteen original Royal offspring had died. Of the twelve remaining, by 1818, not a single one had produced any legitimate grandchildren. Many had produced plenty of illegitimate children, it was true (the Hanoverians were often a bit reckless in this respect), but an illegitimate child could not be king or queen. George and Charrlotte’s third son, William had, for example, no less than ten illegitimate children! This was not much help as none of them could ever be king or queen.

George IV (1820-30): Oldest son of the above.

A constitutional crisis loomed as the Royal children, now in their forties and fifties were encouraged to settle down and start producing heirs as quickly as possible so as to ensure the Royal line didn’t die out as soon as the last of George III’s children died.

As it was the King’s eldest son, Prince George, already proclaimed Regent due to his father’s madness in 1811, was expected to become King George IV on his father’s death, despite already being quite old himself, as well as fat, unpopular and lazy. George was divorced, but did have a daughter, Princess Charlotte of Wales. She was, in contrast, popular and well-liked. Many looked forward to her becoming Queen when her grandfather and father had died. But it was not to be. Tragically, in 1817, Charlotte died herself, aged just 19.

The crisis now became acute: the King’s condition reportedly worsened by the day. He would, in fact, die in 1820. The great race to produce a Royal baby was on!

William IV (1830-37): Third son of George III. Brother of George IV. Uncle of Victoria.

With the pressure mounting, two of the Royal sons, Edward, Duke of Kent and Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge found wives and married quickly in 1818. And, in 1819, three Royal babies were born. Edward, himself already over fifty, became father for the first time to a little girl, while Adolphus and another fairly recently married middle-aged brother, Ernest Augustus soon fathered to a son each (in both cases called George) soon after. The line of succession seemed safe. For the moment.

A short break in Sidmouth
In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising Prince Edward and his wife Victoria were particular keen to ensure their new baby daughter was kept healthy. Their decision to take advantage of the restorative properties of the sea air of Sidmouth on the East Devon coast, however, proved to have disastrous consequences.

The Prince rented Woolbrook Cottage from Christmas 1819. The name was misleading: it was in fact a large substantial house and is now the Royal Glen Hotel. The baby itself was fine. But within days, the prince had decided – against all available advice – to take a bracing walk in the cold rain. This turned out to be a disastrous mistake. Within a few days, he had developed a chill which soon turned into pneumonia. On 23rd January 1820, he died, aged just fifty-two. His father George III died just six days later and soon Edward’s older brother was crowned King George IV.

George IV reigned for a decade, followed by his brother (he of the ten illegitimate children) who became William IV and reigned for seven years until his own death in 1837. It was at that point, eighteen years on, the infant daughter of the man who had died after walking in the rain in Sidmouth, Alexandrina Victoria became Queen herself. Queen Victoria time on the British throne would, in due course, come to be seen as one of the longest and most glorious in British history.

Queen Victoria (1837-1901): Had eight children. Charles III is her great-great-great grandson.

Fun facts about Jimmy Carter

At the time of writing, the former US president, Jimmy Carter is 99 years old. He is not just the oldest former president alive but has now lived longer than anyone else who has ever been US president. However, recent news reports suggest he has now in declining health. With this in mind, it seems an appropriate moment to reflect on his life and achievements.

Let us consider for a moment: Jimmy Carter was US president between 1977 and 1981. This is now an astonishing amount of time ago. The current British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak was born during Carter’s last year in office. John Lennon was shot barely six weeks before Carter’s presidency ended. Nine presidents held office during Carter’s pre-presidential lifetime. Six more presidents have been and gone in the years since he left office. He really is very old indeed.

Some more fun facts about Carter:

1. He was the first US president to be born in a hospital.
2. He is the last of the eight US presidents to have served in the Second World War.
3. He was born in 1924, the same year as George HW Bush (1924-2018). The 30th president Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) was in office then while former President William Taft (born: 1857) was still alive. Wild West veteran, Wyatt Earp was also still alive in 1924 as was author, Thomas Hardy. Non-silent films still lay in the future. Carter was born before Margaret Thatcher or Queen Elizabeth II.
4. Technically, Carter is still eligible to run for a second term as president, should he so wish.
5. Carter claims he once saw a UFO while serving as Governor of Georgia. He doesn’t think it had anything to do with aliens.
6. He wrote a historic novel called The Hornet’s Nest which was published in 2003.
7. Gerald Ford who died aged 93 in 2006 is the second longest surviving president to date.
8. Jimmy was married to his wife Rosalynn for 77 years, longer than any marriage to any US president. Sadly, Rosalynn died in November 2023, aged 96.
9. During 1980, Carter was stalked by potential assassin, John Hinckley. In March 1981, Hinckley shot Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan in a bid to “impress” actress, Jodie Foster. Hinckley failed on both counts: Reagan survived and Foster definitely wasn’t “impressed” by Hinckley’s gesture.
10. Carter has a first-class degree in Nuclear Physics. He was thus unusually well-qualified to understand the Three Mile Island crisis which occurred during his administration.
11. He is often described as a peanut farmer. Strictly speaking, he was not: he owned a peanut warehousing business.
12. In 2012, Carter appeared briefly as himself in the Oscar-winning film, Argo.

Carter’s one term in the White House occurred between 1977 and 1981. He was elected president in November 1976, a year of celebration in the USA as it marked the 200^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But the 1976 Bicentennial Celebrations had a sour edge to them. The nation was undeniably going through a rough time. The 1960s had witnessed a surge in the levels of civil disorder and assassination. In 1974, Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace over the Watergate Scandal. In 1975, Vietnam became a communist state, a development which sharply underlined how comprehensively the US had been defeated in the long war fought there. At home, the US was suffering from the effects of the global fuel crisis. Rising prices and recession were key issues by 1976.

Nixon’s successor as president, Republican, Gerald Ford could not be blamed for all these things. He had no involvement in Watergate whatsoever. But he had been appointed Vice President by Nixon and as president had chosen to pardon his predecessor. In many people’s eyes, he was tainted by association.

Ford also sometimes gave the impression of being simple-minded, a view that was re-enforced by foolish remarks made during a TV debate in which he claimed the Soviet Union did not dominate eastern Europe: a statement that was clearly fundamentally untrue during the Cold War years of the 1970s.

For these reasons and more, Ford looked vulnerable in the 1976 elections. But many people were nevertheless surprised that it was Democrat, James Earl “Jimmy” Carter who managed to narrowly beat Ford and become the 39^th US president.

Outside his home state of Georgia, Carter had been little known. He was seen as a peanut farmer. A few years earlier, he had appeared as a guest on the TV show, What’s My Line? Nobody had been able to guess who he was or what his job was.

But he was a serious politician, a former senator and a Governor of Georgia. His had a broad, infectious grin. His real strength was his honesty. “I will never lie to you,” he said. Carter’s outlook stemmed from his perfectly genuine religious beliefs. He was almost the exact opposite of Richard Nixon. And that was what American voters wanted in 1976.

Carter enjoyed a number of successes during his president, notably the Camp David Accords which offered hope for the prospects of peace in the Middle East and various breakthroughs in the relationship between East and West. But sadly, his presidency is now often seen as largely a failure.

By 1980, it was becoming clear Carter had failed to lift the clouds of economic gloom which had first descended on the nation before Carter had taken office. Carter’s electoral prospects were furthermore weakened by his failure to free the American hostages taken from the US Embassy in Tehran soon after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Operation Eagle Claw, a military mission geared towards rescuing the hostages proved a disastrous failure in April 1980. The hostages were only released on January 20^th 1981, shortly after the end of Carter’s presidency. Carter had proven to be a one-term president only, having been soundly defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in the November 1980.

Despite this setback, Carter later won the Nobel Peace Prize and became a respected elder statesman. His fundamental decency and integrity have never been in doubt.

Podcast review 2: The Rest is Politics

What is it?: Onetime New Labour spin doctor, Alastair Campbell and 2019 Conservative leadership contender, Rory Stewart discuss the latest political developments both in the UK and around the world. The regular podcast which is usually less than an hour long appears every Wednesday. A special Question Time edition devoted to answering listeners’ questions appears on Thursdays. Occasional ‘Emergency’ podcasts appear when something deemed to be urgent has happened e.g. a sudden ministerial resignation.

History: Since launching in March 2022, TRIP has become the most successful of Goalhanger’s Rest Is… brand and is consistently one of the most listened to podcasts in the UK. As of the end of March 2024, there have been over 220 episodes, of which I have listened to well over 200 so far. A spin-off podcast, The Rest Is Politics Leading in which Stewart and Campbell interview someone is only slightly less successful and has released sixty episodes every Monday since the start of 2023.

Format: The podcast works on the principle that the two men should always “disagree agreeably” thus avoiding any serious argument. By and large, this works. Despite the ostensibly Labour versus Tory nature of the set-up, the two are not actually poles apart politically anyway. Although a lifelong Labourite, Campbell was expelled from the party after encouraging people to vote tactically for the Lib Dems. After nine years as an MP, Stewart lost the Tory whip in 2019 as a result of his campaign to prevent a no-deal Brexit and has never attempted to re-join the Tories. Both men believe leaving the EU has been a disaster and strongly dislike populist politicians like Trump, Johnson and Truss.

Both have interesting backgrounds. Campbell is the older, more assertive and slightly better known of the two. He remains fiercely tribal and proud of the Blair government’s record in office. He is scathing of the honours system and the public schools which Rory (an old Etonian) is a product of. He is disparaging about the Tory record on austerity and while not an uncritical champion of Keir Starmer, basically still wants Labour to win. His support for the centre-left is matched only by his enthusiasm for Burnley FC. He has also been open about his battles with his own mental health, once revealing he was in the middle of a depressive episode on air.

Rory Stewart, in contrast, has a colourful background which in addition to his years in parliament includes experience on the ground of Afghanistan and Iraq. He knows from personal experience that the likes of Johnson and Truss are grossly ill-suited to high office: he has worked alongside and under them. He remains deeply disillusioned with the Tories of today and seems resigned to the fact they are headed for opposition, but has thus far held back from endorsing Labour. He sometimes speaks up for individual members like Alex Chalk and Gillian Keegan who he likes. He seems to be hoping the Tories will one day return to a position where he feels he can support them again.

He is well-spoken, intelligent and cultured. Until 2019, he tallied exactly with Michael Foot’s famous description of Iain Macleod as “the most intelligent man in the Silly Party.” He has a strong attachment to traditions and institutions like the monarchy and the House of Lords. At the same time, he remains disillusioned by many of the failings of the political system which prevented him from making as much progress as he would have liked in office.

Thus far Rory and Alastair have only fallen out seriously on air once, when Alastair felt Rory was criticising the Blair government’s efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland. There were also tensions last year when Rory subjected Alastair to vigorous scrutiny over his role in the build up to the war in Iraq, twenty years earlier.

But generally, this is the perfect double-act to host one of the UK’s finest political podcasts.

Book review: The Wild Men, by David Torrance

One hundred years ago, the news that the first ever Labour government had come to power, rather put the wind up some people. In fact, they needn’t have worried. Whereas some feared the “wild men” of the new regime who they feared might lead Britain towards the same brand of Soviet-style Bolshevism which had engulfed Russia seven years before, in fact, the Labour administration of 1924, was a minority government reliant on the Liberal Party for support, which only held power for eight months. Even King George V found most of the new Labour cabinet to be reasonable chaps.
In this fascinating book, David Torrance subjects both the key members and events of 1924 to vigorous scrutiny. How did Ramsay MacDonald cope with being Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary simultaneously? Was Philip Snowdon’s reputation as “Iron Chancellor” deserved? Ultimately, the success of the first ever Labour government may be judged by the fact Labour have returned to power five times in the century since. By the end of 2024, they may very well be back again.
The NHS, comprehensive schools, the Winter of Discontent, the Good Friday Agreement: it all started here.

Podcast review 1: The Rest is History

What is it?: Historians and old friends, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook discuss a variety of historical themes, usually for about forty or fifty minutes, two or three times a week.

History: As of January 23rd 2024, there have been 411 episodes, of which I have listened to just over 150. The podcast has been produced by Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger podcasts since its inception in November 2020. It is a success and can usually be seen hovering either within or close to the top ten on lists of the most successful podcasts in the UK. It has inspired a whole range of “The Rest of” podcasts also produced by Goalhanger such as The Rest is … Politics, Football, Business and Entertainment. All of these have also been successful (TRI Politics and TRI Entertainment often overtaking TRI History in popularity), even though, title-wise, only “the rest is history” is ever used as a common, everyday expression.

Format: Tom and Dominic are clearly old chums. Both are professional historians. Both are middle-aged men. Tom (who should not be confused with the 27-year-old Spiderman actor of the same name) is in his fifties, while Dominic will turn fifty in 2024. The tone is light, a world away from the stuffy, “That’s you that is” historians once portrayed by Rob Newman and David Baddiel. Like Newman and Baddiel, however, they do occasionally make each other break into laughter on air, sometimes not for obvious reasons.

Dominic’s speciality is modern history, Tom is better on the ancient world. This distinction is illustrated by the show’s logo which depicts Tom in the form of a Classical statue while Dominic is portrayed as a Churchillian bust. Both men will discuss every topic. Subject matter covered in the last year has included President Kennedy’s assassination, the Aztec Empire, the rise of the Nazis, Columbus, Reagan, Baghdad, Captain Cook and British fascism. The scope of the series is impressive. Subjects are always covered thoroughly and well. Guests (including Tom’s military historian brother) are sometimes invited in to discuss areas on which Tom and Dom are less confident. Novelist Zadie Smith appeared recently to talk about the Tichborne Claimant) while Stephen Fry was in an early Lockdown-era episode.

History boys: Tom Holland (not that one) and Dominic Sandbrook.

Running jokes: Tom is obsessed with cricket and is a big fan of Prince Edward who once praised one of his books. Dom often writes for the Daily Mail although is less reactionary than this makes him sound. However, he does admit to despising John Lennon and occasionally gets lost in a patriotic fervour. Tom also admits to being a big Tony Blair fan although generally the pod avoids discussing 21st century politics, particularly since The Rest is Politics started in 2022. Although not obviously religious himself, Tom is sometimes accused of finding a way to discuss religion within any subject they are discussing. Dominic is probably the more dominant of the two personalities. Tom can be slightly camp.

Historical figures who crop up a lot in Tom and Dom’s discussions, such as Otto von Bismarck are typically described as “very much a friend of The Rest is History.” The duo are also easily distracted by a silly name such as Estes Kefauver, Perkin Warbeck or Tiberius van Ladypleaser. I may have made one of these names up.

Optional extras: Fans can now buy a The Rest is History or get episodes, early and ad-free by joining The Rest is History Club. I am definitely a fan of the podcast, but have resisted both of these options thus far. I generally don’t mind waiting for episodes (I don’t listen to them all anyway). I also don’t mind the short commercial breaks (which are usually for The Week magazine or something).

Criticism: By far the worst aspect of The Rest is History is the tendency to introduce each episode with a quotation often delivered with an excruciating impersonation of the person being quoted. I have no problem with the quotes themselves, but I doubt anyone enjoys hearing Tom impersonating the likes of Hitler and Marilyn Monroe as much as he does performing it. Dominic is equally guilty in this regard. This aspect of the show which is already delivered with an attitude of “we know this bit’s crap but we’re going to it anyway” should be stopped immediately.

Overall: “The history book on the shelf. It’s always repeating itself.” So sang Abba, on their Eurovision-winning hit, Waterloo, fifty years ago. Happily, The Rest is History rarely repeats itself. It is a first-class podcast which you will find yourself returning to, again and again.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps, by David (1801).

TV review: The Crown. Season 6, Episode 10: Sleep, Dearie Sleep

The Queen (Imelda Staunton). In the end, even God couldn’t save her

It’s the end of an era.

After seven years, six series and sixty episodes, Netflix’s The Crown has finally come to an end. Rather than going right up to the present and allowing us to see the cast watching their own early lives being dramatized on TV, the story concludes in 2005, with Charles’s relatively low-key wedding to the love of his life, Camilla Parker-Bowles (Dominic West and Olivia Williams). Had Charles followed his instincts and done this about thirty years earlier, one imagines The Crown would have only needed four series, rather than six. But we’ll never know now, will we?

As it is, Season Six has contained more than its fair share of genuinely crazy moments, notably some cameo appearances from the ghosts of Diana and Dodi Fayed (Elizabeth Debicki and Khalid Abdalla) following their deaths in the 1997 Paris road crash. And guess what? There are more ghosts in this episode (sort of) as the eighty-year-old Queen (Imelda Staunton) is haunted by the spirits of her younger self. We thus see the monarch engaging in conversation with her middle-aged Elizabeth (a welcome return visit to The Crown for Olivia Colman) and later, the younger version from the dawn of her reign (again, good to see Claire Foy from the first two series again) The Queen even gets a quick salute from her teenaged self, played by young Claire Foy lookalike, Viola Prettejohn, who played the teenaged Princess Elizabeth in the wartime scenes of the recent Ritz episode.

The three faces of Queendom: maiden, mother and er…crone

The final Crown ends with Imelda’s Queen walking boldly forward (chess fans will know, Queens can go as far as they like in any direction, as long as its in a straight line) with Colman and Foy following her on either side. It’s a bit like one of those old Doctor Who episodes where all the Doctors (e.g. Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee) get to meet up in the Tardis simultaneously. Thankfully, unlike Doctor Who, the Queen never had to undergo the awkward and painful process of ‘regeneration’ as she morphed from one actress into another. As her first Prince Philip (Doctor Who Number 11, Matt Smith) could have told her, this would have been no picnic.

Anyway, the purpose of resurrecting these earlier models of the QE2 is to allow us to see the Queen airing her private thoughts as she contemplates announcing her abdication during a speech at Charles’s wedding. Did you know the Queen came very close to doing this? Chances are, you didn’t, simply because it never happened. There is no real evidence that the Queen ever considered abdicating at any point ever. Even if she had done, it’s hardly likely she would have announced her decision on the day of Charles’s wedding. Even in non-royal circles announcing big news during somebody’s else’s wedding ceremony is considered a breach of etiquette.

In this version, the Queen is contemplating abdication as a result of feelings of mortality generated by news of the continuing preparation of Operation London Bridge: the long-running plans for her own state funeral. These plans were first prepared in the Sixties, but were, of course, not put into practice until 2022. By choosing to stay on, the Queen realises she is effectively condemning Britons in the 21^st century to nearly twenty more years of monarchy under one very old Queen followed by decades of kingship under several old men. Not that there’s ever any real drama generated over whether the Queen is going to stand down in 2005 or not. Obviously, she didn’t! Even The Crown would never get away with changing history that much.

Instead, the Queen throws away the handwritten bit of paper announcing her retirement on the spur of the moment. She then launches into a surprisingly irreverent speech reminiscent of a stand-up comedy routine. She only just stops short of taking the piss out of Harry (Luther Ford) for dressing up as a Nazi or joking that she was, in fact, guilty of killing Diana.

The Crown thus ends with the series, like perhaps the nation, much weaker at the end than it was at the start. Charles is at least happy to be finally married to Camilla. William (Ed McVey) is going out with Cate (Meg Bellamy) after seeing her wearing a see-through dress at a fashion show. Wills and Harry are already feuding. Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel), who was recently so popular that the Queen (according to The Crown) envied him to the extent that she was having bizarre dreams in which the founder of New Labour replaced her as monarch, is now unpopular again thanks to the Iraq War. In fact, this isn’t quite true: Blair did win a substantial General Election victory in 2005 and was still fairly popular when he himself stood down two years later. Perhaps writer Peter Morgan feels as if he has to make amends for giving Blair (then played by Michael Sheen) such an easy ride in his screenplay for Stephen Frears’s 2006 film, The Queen. We are spared dramatized versions of Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson or Truss.

We last see the Queen (Staunton) walking slowly across an empty room, then disappearing through a door, a scene presumably intended to illustrate the final seventeen years of her reign followed by her death. So ends The Crown. Despite some great performances and many fine moments, however, unlike the reign of the Queen herself, in the end, most people would probably judge the series to have fallen some way short of genuine greatness.

We three Queens: Staunton, Colman and Foy

Can Trump do a Grover Cleveland?

The possibility of a second Donald Trump presidency undoubtedly fills many people with horror. But if he did manage to win the 2024 US presidential election, he would have accomplished a feat achieved by only one person before. Up until now, Grover Cleveland is the only man to have won a full term as president, before leaving the White House only to return to be elected to serve another full term, four years later. Cleveland (1885-89, 1893-97) is thus counted as both the 22^nd and 24^th US president.

Cleveland’s record is impressive. Aside from Franklin D. Roosevelt, he is the only person to win the popular vote in three US presidential elections. Having won the presidency in 1884, the Democrat, Cleveland was defeated in his bid for re-election by Republican, Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Harrison, a dull, uninspiring figure triumphed in the electoral college despite losing in the popular vote to Cleveland. Cleveland returned to defeat Harrison in 1892, enabling him to embark on a wholly unprecedented non-consecutive second term.

Trump is a very different character from Cleveland, however. For one thing, Cleveland was still only 47 in 1885, making him the youngest ever new president at that point. He was still just shy of sixty when his second term ended twelve years later. Trump, in contrast, would be, at eighty-two, the oldest US president there has ever been, were he to complete a second term in the White House.

Trump’s electoral record has thus far been much less impressive than Cleveland’s. Trump lost the popular vote in both the 2016 election, despite winning in the crucial electoral college and in the 2020 contest with Biden which he lost overall.

For most presidents, leaving the White House marks the end of the road. Since the 1950s, two term presidents like Reagan, Bill Clinton, the second President Bush and Obama have been constitutionally unable to stand for a third term even if they wanted to. Meanwhile, those like Jimmy Carter or George HW Bush who left office after one term, the experience of electoral defeat in a November general election proved so devastating that they usually never sought the presidency again.

There have been exceptions, however. Although he wasn’t actually defeated in the 1908 election, the popular Republican President Theodore Roosevelt resisted widespread pressure to run again in that contest, having previously won handsomely in 1904. It was a decision he soon came to bitterly regret and by 1912, the former President, still only in his early fifties, was campaigning to get his old job back from the outside. But there was a complication: his own party was intent on renominating his successor, President William Taft in 1912. T.R. thus formed his own party and ran as a Progressive “Bull Moose” candidate. However, by choosing to run against the incumbent, he only really succeeded in splitting the Republican vote, pushing Taft into third place and ensuring the victory of Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who probably not have won otherwise.

Ex-President Herbert Hoover also considered another run for the presidency following his defeat by Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. This is, in some ways, surprising. Hoover had become very unpopular following the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Hs name had become so strongly associated with the Great Depression that many of the shanty towns which sprung up in its wake became known as “Hoovervilles.” Little wonder, Hoover’s dreams of a political comeback got nowhere.

In Britain, prime ministerial returns to office have proven less unusual. This is largely because a party leader does not automatically lose his or her position, simply because they have lost a General Election and can thus theoretically live on to win back power another day. William Gladstone served as PM four times between 1868 and 1894 while Stanley Baldwin had three separate stints in Downing Street between 1923 and 1937. This has become less common in recent times, however. While it’s true both Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson both came back for a second spell in power, generally most PMs can assume that like Edward Heath, James Callaghan, John Major or Gordon Brown, that if they lead their party to defeat in a General Election, their time is up.

TV review: The Crown. Season 6. Episode 4: Aftermath

No time to Di: Ghost Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) haunts the Queen (Imelda Staunton).

Woo-ooh! Watch out everyone! Halloween may have been and gone, but there are two ACTUAL GHOSTS in this episode. Despite being dispatched in the last episode, the spirits of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) both briefly return to the mortal realm to haunt their relatives. Di visits her grief-stricken ex-husband, Prince Charles (Dominic West) and the Queen (Imelda Staunton) while Dodi pops in on his dad, Mohamed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw).

One wonders if the “psychic” who the then still-living Diana reportedly visited in Episode 2 had anything to do with this? Can we expect to see more phantoms in The Crown’s future? Perhaps a return visit from John Lithgow’s Churchill or from the Queen’s father, George VI (Jared Harris)?Perhaps Charles I? Or Henry VIII? I doubt it.

Of course, they’re presumably not really supposed to be ghosts. If they were everyone would have been a little bit more surprised when they first materialised. For example, when the spectral Diana introduces herself mid-flight with a playful “ta-da!”, Charles would presumably have tried to jump off the plane. It is a dramatic device, albeit a thoroughly silly one which doesn’t work at all.

In truth, this is inevitably a very sombre episode. Di and Dodi are dead and The Crown is quite unstinting in showing Charles and Al-Fayed’s unrestrained grief as they learn the shocking news from Paris. Despite having so recently been engaged in a PR war with his ex-wife, Charles (in this, at least) now does an abrupt volte-face and stands up for the rights of Diana and their two children. The Queen and Philip’s (Jonathan Pryce) stubborn determination to keep buggering on as if nothing has changed, seems positively cold-hearted in comparison. The ghostly Diana plays a crucial role in softening up the Queen’s official response to the tragedy.

We also see Al-Fayed in full grief mode, an element that was entirely absent from Peter Morgan’s last journey into this territory when he wrote 2006’s acclaimed film, The Queen. Al-Fayed is not yet the crazed conspiracy theorist he will become. We get to see Imelda Staunton replicating the Queen’s actual TV broadcast from the time, something Helen Mirren did in the 2006 film. It would be interesting to see the three versions: the late Queen’s, Mirren’s and Staunton’s played side by side.

We also get some nonsense about the young Prince William (Rufus Kampa) going missing for fourteen hours following his mother’s death: an untrue story which goes precisely nowhere (“Have you seen William?…oh, there he is”).

It’s hard to imagine Peter Morgan would have got away with portraying Diana and Dodi as ghosts in the 2006 Helen Mirren film. Guess what? He doesn’t really get away with it here either.

Windsor change: The Queen (Imelda Staunton) changes tack.

TV review: The Crown. Season 6. Episode 1: Persona Non Grata

Under pressure: Diana (Elizabeth Debicki)

The Crown is back!

But while always a big event, the arrival of this, the sixth and final series in the royal saga has received a somewhat more muted media reaction than usual. This is partly, no doubt, because of the death of the actual real-life Queen last year. In truth, however, Imelda Staunton’s monarch is no longer the star of the show anyway, at least, in these first four episodes (the final six will be released on December 14th). The focus for now is mostly on the recently divorced Princess Diana and her activities during her final fateful summer of 1997.

We all know where this leading, of course. As if anyone needed reminding, a short prelude depicts the famous Parisian car crash from the perspective of a late night French dogwalker who calls the emergency services after witnessing the limo speeding into the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, swiftly followed by an inevitable, sickening thud.

The next three episodes then go back to show us Diana’s final weeks, notably her blossoming romance with the equally doomed Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) as they holiday in Saint-Tropez. Not everything is as idyllic as it might first appear, however. For one thing, Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) is already being hounded by the paparazzi. For another, Dodi’s motives for wooing Di seem questionable as he’s been put up to it by his powerful, super-rich father, Mohamed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw). Al-Fayed takes an obsessive, prurient interest in his son’s progress with the Princess. Ultimately, his constant interference completely ruins Dodi’s relationship with his beautiful American fiancée, model, Kelly Fisher (Erin Richards).

Al-Fayed is, incidentally, another figure who has died recently in real-life, aged 94 at the end of August, twenty-six years almost to the day after the accident which killed his son.

Meanwhile, Prince Charles (Dominic West) is in a strop because he can’t get anyone to attend Camilla’s (Olivia Williams) 50th birthday party. While his perpetually sozzled aunt, Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) is happy to party anywhere, both the Queen and Philip (Jonathan Pryce) basically explain they are staying in to wash their hair that night as neither want to be seen to formally endorse the future king’s relationship with the Prince’s mistress. When the party does happen it is completely overshadowed by newspaper coverage of his ex-wife’s holiday antics.

It’s all a bit sad really and a bit of a shame that in a series which is dedicated to covering the Queen’s seventy-year reign in 54 episodes, we get at least five episodes devoted to the year 1997 alone. Diana’s death was undeniably a major event, but it was entirely an accident which could easily have been averted had events transpired differently on the night itself. Her romance with Dodi was also very brief and may well have ended before too long, had the couple survived.

With these points in mind, one wonders if it was really necessary to cover the details of Diana and Dodi’s final days in such detail?

Doomed romance: Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) and Diana (Elizabeth Debicki)

Book review: Marcia Williams: The Life and Times of Baroness Falkender, by Linda McDougall

Who was the most powerful British woman in 20th century British politics?

This should be an easy one. As the first and only female Prime Minister during those years, Margaret Thatcher is really the only possible answer. An unusually influential leader by any measure, love her or hate her, ‘the Iron Lady’ undoubtedly wielded and exercised considerable power during her eleven years in Downing Street.

But who would be come second on that century’s female British power list? The late Queen Elizabeth II reigned throughout most of the second half of the century. But as a constitutional monarch, how much power did she really have? Queen Victoria may have been more powerful in her heyday. But she died in January 1901.

A case could perhaps be made for pioneering women cabinet ministers such as Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams or Mo Mowlam (while it is true Labour has not yet produced a woman prime minister, they have always had a much stronger reputation for creating strong, decent woman cabinet ministers than the Tories have had). But really the argument presented by Linda McDougall in this new biography is overwhelming. Neither elected or royal, Marcia Williams, later known as Baroness Falkender practically ran Britain jointly with Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson between 1964 and 1970 and again between 1974 and 1976. She was Wilson’s personal secretary, then his political secretary, then the head of his political office. She was undoubtedly the most powerful woman in politics during the Wilson era.

The book is very welcome as until now Marcia Williams has had a rather odd political reputation. For one thing, although she only died in 2019, at the age of eighty-six, she remains largely unknown to most people under fifty. I myself, who was born in the same year she and Wilson left Downing Street (1976) knew little of her growing up and despite always being interested in politics, have no clear memories of ever seeing any footage of her speaking on TV.

Those who did know her have often sought to cast her in a negative light. Unsurprisingly, the familiar forces of sexism and snobbery have played a big part in forging public perceptions of her, something this book fights hard to redress. Some have argued she exerted undue influence on Wilson. It is now no longer really disputed that she was very influential, although the extent to which it was “undue” now seems more questionable. It has also suggested she was a malevolent presence who prevented Wilson from reaching his full potential. Neither of these charges stand up to scrutiny. Nor does the claim made by some that she was merely a stupid, jumped-up typist. She was clearly very intelligent.

She first met Wilson in 1956 around the time of the Khruschev’s visit to Britain. The visit included a disastrous dinner held between Soviet leader and various senior Labour Party figures including George Brown which soon descended into a row. Marcia was then in her early twenties, a bright young university graduate and secretary who was convinced Wilson, then forty and frustrated in opposition represented the future of the party. McDougall is in no doubt at all that the two had a sexual relationship with Wilson at this time. She is also certain this ended early. During the next twenty years, they would form a formidable political partnership which saw Wilson lead Labour to four General Election victories.

Her life was not free of scandal. After the failure of her marriage, she had an affair with the married political editor of the Daily Mail, Walter Terry. Two sons resulted from this affair although Terry later returned to his wife. Marcia fought hard to keep both her pregnancies and the existence of the children out of the public eye. This was easier in those days when the press was far less intrusive than it is today. On the downside, illegitimacy was considered far more scandalous than it is today, when more than half of children are born out of wedlock and even the term “out of wedlock” sounds very old-fashioned. There was always an underlying concern that people might wrongly assume her sons were Wilson’s.

She will always be associated with the “Lavender List” controversy which marred the end of Wilson’s premiership. Her later career was also blighted by her addiction to purple hearts and tranquilisers, a very common problem at the time. Her career really ended too early: she was only forty-four when Wilson left office in 1976. Her later years were undermined by ill-health.

Linda McDougall has produced a fine biography here which sheds valuable light on an important and neglected figure of post-war British political history.

Book review: My Lady Parts, by Doon Mackichan

Doon Mackichan is one of Britain’s finest comedy actresses. You might have seen her playing Cathy, the neighbour from hell in the sitcom, Two Doors Down or as Jane Plough, the long-suffering agent of Matt Berry’s wayward actor in Toast of London. She’s also been in Roman-era sitcom, Plebs, I’m Alan Partridge and far too many other things to detail here.

There is more to the title of the book, than simply a suggestive innuendo. Throughout this very readable memoir, each chapter begins with a short character description of the sort an actor might see when considering taking a particular role. In this case, they each sum up a particular “part” which Doon has been forced to adopt at different stages of her life e.g. The Angry Young Feminist, The Stupid Tart, The Deranged Mother and so on.

Her life has had its share of ups and downs. Highs have included her three series on seminal Channel 4 sketch show, Smack The Pony (1999-2003) with Sally Phillips and Fiona Allen, which was one of the most satisfactory experiences of her working life. She also swam the English Channel. Lows have included illness, divorce and one particularly intense family crisis.

A recurrent theme of the book has been the persistent sexism she has encountered throughout her life and career. Boys have treated her badly from the playground onwards. In this, she is certainly sadly anything but unique, although she is refreshingly frank in speaking up about it. The sexism has extended from the inadequate childcare provisions laid on during times when she has had young children to severe restrictions being placed on the types of role she has been allowed to play. Her own Mary Whitehouse Experience was an unpleasant one with the four stars, particularly David Baddiel treating her with arrogance and disdain. A pre-fame Ricky Gervais also comes out of the book badly, making a pushy attempt to land himself a starring role in the all-female Smack The Pony while a famous, dress-wearing male British artist (hmmm…who could that be?) is amongst those who have made inappropriate comments to her. As one of the most prominent women appearing on the brilliant Brass Eye ‘Paedegeddon’ Special, she was demonised by the tabloid press in 2001

Overall, this is an engaging book from a talented actress who one feels could have been bigger than she has been. Doon Mackichan seems angry occasionally. She is right to be so and is certainly angry about the right things.

My Lady Parts, by Doon Mackichan. Published by: Canongate.

Book review: A Northern Wind, Britain 1962-65, by David Kynaston

It is sometimes said of the nineteen sixties: if you can remember them, you weren’t really there. Oddly, reading the latest volume in David Kynaston’s epic Tales of a New Jerusalem series on post-war British life left me with much the same feeling. Kynaston’s 600-page book goes into so much painstaking detail about every aspect of British life during that period, that I almost feel as if I really do remember being there. Yet in reality, I wasn’t there at all. I’m not even old enough to remember the seventies.

The book doesn’t cover the whole decade, of course, merely the 27-month period between October 1962 and January 1965. The month of October 1962 was in itself hugely significant culturally. As John Higgs has discussed in his book, Love and Let Die, the same day, Saturday 6th October 1962 witnessed the simultaneous release of both the first Beatles’ single, Love Me Do and the very first cinema release for the very first James Bond film, Dr. No starring Sean Connery. It was also the month during which, thanks to the Cuban Missile Crisis, humanity came closer to wiping itself our than at any time before or since.

In truth, this entire two-year timespan, may well down as the most eventful in Britain’s peacetime history. The book’s title doubtless refers to the conditions which precipitated the Big Freeze of 1962-63, one of the coldest winters ever recorded, which strikes early in the book, but also the northern character of many of the changes wrought during this time such as the coming of The Beatles and the arrival of Yorkshireman, Harold Wilson into Downing Street in October 1964.

The year 1963 saw the government of Harold “Supermac” Macmillan dealt with a severe dose of Kryptonite, by the eruption of the Profumo Affair which shook British society to its foundations. By October 1963, Macmillan, who was approaching seventy had lost all appetite for the job and used the excuse of a perfectly treatable bout of prostate cancer to make a sharp exit from Downing Street (he went on to live until 1986). With no formal arrangements to elect Tory leaders yet in place, the subsequent “contest” to succeed the old man quickly turned into a farce, the skeletal Sir Alec Douglas-Home somehow emerging as leader, despite still being in the House of Lords at the time of his appointment.

Home should, in theory, have been easy meat for a Labour Party revitalised after more than a decade in opposition, by the election of the youthful Harold Wilson as leader earlier in the year. Today, a politician who always wore a raincoat and smoked a pipe would risk seeming like an odd ball. But in 1963, these things when added to the new leader’s heady, intoxicating, arguably slightly meaningless talk of the “white heat of revolution” helped make Wilson seem like the harbinger of a new, exciting, more technological and meritocratic new age. Wilson’s period as leader between March 1963 and October 1964, is still seen by many as the perfect template for any Opposition leader. Despite this, he only just managed to knock the stiff, untelegenic Sir Alec off his perch, leading Labour to victory with a single figure majority.

But it’s not all about politics. Far from it. Instead, we get a unique insight into almost all aspects of British life through the TV they watched, the newspapers and magazines they read, the music, the sport and the thoughts and feelings of people both famous and ordinary through their letters and diaries. It is a reminder that history is not always what we remember it to be and that people’s perceptions and attitudes back then might not be now exactly what we would now expect them to be.

For example, as some reflected idly on the return of Dixon of Dock Green (“like an old friend coming into the house every Saturday”), others discussed the possible implications of the contraceptive pill (“this is not a subject which a woman will discuss over morning coffee – even with her closest friends,” wrote Jean Rook in the Yorkshire Post). The Beeching Report was published. The Great Train Robbery happened. On the night of President Kennedy’s assassination, Beatles fans went to see the Fab Four perform at the Globe Theatre on Stockton-on-Tees. Mods and Rockers fought on Brighton’s beaches. The first episode of Top of the Pops went out. Some took an instant dislike to its first ever host: “What an odd-looking individual…like something from Dr Who…Mutton dressed as lamb.” Sometimes the effect is similar to reading a Twitter feed. The host on that occasion was the 37-year-old disc jockey, Jimmy Savile.

In Smethwick, the Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths won the seat after fighting a blatantly racist campaign using the slogan, “if you want a n—– for a neighbour, vote Labour.” His election provoked huge controversy. On TV, however, despite some grumbling, The Black and White Minstrels Show continued to air and would do for many years. News stories like the unfolding Profumo Affair provoked mixed reactions ranging from sympathy for Macmillan, often hypocritical disgust, outrage over the nature of the media coverage and undisguised lust towards Christine Keeler from the future comedy writer, Laurence Marks, then a teenaged boy.

There is more detailed analysis too. With the perspective of sixty years, David Kynaston examines the impact of the Beeching cuts to the railways and also takes a thorough look at the condition of the welfare state as his epic series of books reaches its half way point, midway between the landmark 20th century General Elections of 1945 and 1979. Elsewhere, we are reminded that sport did not stop even on the day of Sir Winston Churchill’s state funeral with Peterborough United beating Arsenal that very afternoon. The Britain of January 1965 was undeniably massively different from the land the great war leader had been born into ninety years before. But it was also, as this superb book consistently reminds us, very different from the Britain of today.

Book review: A Northern Wind, Britain 1962-65, by David Kynaston. Published by: Bloomsbury.

Book review: The Real Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, by Andrew Norman

It has always been something of a mystery how someone as intelligent and accomplished as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ended his days being duped by a couple of Yorkshire schoolgirls into believing a number of clearly bogus pictures of fairies were real. By any measure, Conan Doyle was a very talented and successful man: a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction, a legal advocate, a qualified doctor, a political campaigner who played both football and cricket professionally and who also boxed, played golf and billiards very well. His towering achievement was, of course, the creation of great fictional Baker Street supersleuth, Sherlock Holmes. Although he was embarrassed by the levels of success this character achieved (Conan Doyle soon found he could come with the stories fairly easily), he can now justifiably described as the father of all modern detective fiction. Holmes’s famous rule of thumb was always, “once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer.” although he added, ” I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.”

Sadly, in later life, an increasingly superstitious Conan Doyle grew increasingly reluctant to eliminate the impossible too. This short biography helps to explain why.

Book review: Code of Conduct, by Chris Bryant

British politics is in trouble. Lots of our MPs are (contrary to legend) hard-working and decent. But some are not. As an MP himself, Chris Bryant has witnessed many of the negative elements of British parliamentary life first-hand . He was there, for example, on the shameful day, the Boris Johnson government attempted to allow an unprecedented rule change to allow former minister, Owen Paterson to get away with breaking Commons rules. He has seen (as we all have) the now disgraced Prime Minister Johnson lying and lying and lying again in the Commons and numerous MPs from all parties bending and breaking the rules to protect themselves and achieve personal advantage. Reform is clearly sorely needed. At the very least, the rule that no member should be able to accuse another member of lying within the House of Commons chamber is surely long overdue for change? Chris Bryant knows what he’s talking about and clearly has many great ideas on how to change things for the better. It is surely time we ejected the current ruling band of corrupt, incompetent miscreants from power and elected a Labour government imbued with the very real appetite and energy to implement these long overdue and urgently needed reforms was elected in its place.

Starship Troopers: 25 years on

Super Troopers: 25 years of Starship Troopers

YOU are Richard M. Nixon!

Can you do better than the 37th president of the USA? Complete this quiz and find out!

(And remember, if things get too tough, you can always resign…)

1. 1950: You are campaigning to be elected to the US senate. Your opponent, the actress Helen Gagahan Douglas is actually fairly liberal Democrat but you want to imply she has communist connections. What nickname do you come up with for her?

a) Stalin’s sister-in-law

b) Mao’s mouthpiece

c) The Pink Lady

d) The Molotov cocktail

e) That goddamn crazy, liberal, pinko, commie-loving Hollywood bitch

2. 1952: You are delivering the famous Checkers speech on TV in a desperate bid to retain your position as General Eisenhower’s running-mate. But what exactly do you say about Checkers, a cocker spaniel dog during the broadcast?

a) “Believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl—Tricia, the 6-year-old—named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.”

b) You denounce Checkers as a communist and deny having anything to do with him.

c) Counter-attack by accusing the Democrat candidate, Adlai Stevenson of having accepted a whole menagerie of animals as gifts including a snake called “Chess” and a penguin named “Ludo.”

d) Propose launching Checkers into orbit, making him the first dog in space before the end of the decade. e) Propose a “Checkers strategy” to rival Eisenhower’s “domino theory.”

3. 1960: The presidential TV debate with John F. Kennedy is approaching but you are in a bad way. You look haggard, shifty and sweaty while Kennedy looks pristine, polished and smooth. What do you do?

a) Leave the make-up people to attempt to cover-up your appearance as well as possible. Cover-ups always work.

b) Draw attention away from your appearance by mimicking Kennedy in an effeminate, high-pitched voice every time you speak.

c) Arrange for extracts from your successful 1952 Checkers speech to be inserted into the broadcast every time it’s your turn to speak and hope the content is still relevant.

4. 1968: You are running for president again. How will you tackle the ongoing Vietnam War?

a) Propose bombing Vietnam back to the stone age.

b) A more nuanced approach. Propose bombing Vietnam but only back to the iron age.

c) Unconditional surrender.

d) Pretend you have a “secret plan to end the war” leaving you free to come up with a plan at your leisure once you’ve been elected.

5. 1969: Congratulations! You have won the presidency. Time to compose your “Enemies List.” Who should go on it?

a) Dr Henry Kissinger, John Erlichman, H.R Haldeman, Pat Nixon and Bob Hope.

b) Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Charles Manson, Idi Amin and Patty Hearst.

c) Ted Kennedy, Barbara Streisand, Bill Cosby and Jane Fonda.

6. 1969: You claim to speak for…

a)  The silent majority

b) The vocal majority

c) An effete court of impudent snobs.

d) The military-industrial complex.

7. 1972: Re-election looms. You seem to be heading for an easy win. Do you…

a) Let nature take its course. Campaign normally. Why not? You’re clearly going to win anyway.

b) Approve an orchestrated campaign of sabotage and dirty tricks against your opponents culminating in the Watergate break-in.

8, 1973: Watergate. How do you defend the administration from accusations of a cover-up?

a) There will be no BS from DC.

b) There will no dam built obstructing this Watergate.

c) There will be no whitewash at the White House.

9. 1973: Spiro Agnew has resigned as vice-president after being accused of tax evasion. Who should replace him?

a) Nelson Rockefeller? Bob Dole? A safe pair of hands who can take over should you be required to leave office.

b) Gerald Ford. Surely congress wouldn’t risk impeaching you if it meant someone like him becoming president?

ANSWERS

1. c) was the nickname you used. Any of them would have probably worked.
2. a) was what you said.
3. a) You have little alternative. It didn’t work.
4. d) You opt for this one. Eventually it was decided to adopt a policy of “Vietnamisation”: basically handing over the fighting to the Vietnamese enabling a gradual US withdrawal ensuring eventual defeat. Probably the best possible outcome in the circumstances.
5. c) of course! a) are all your supporters. b) are not really your friends either, but none for various reasons made the list.
6. a) Spiro Agnew used c) to refer to anti-war protesters. d) is a quote by President Eisenhower.
7. b) Although a) would have been a better decision.
8. c)
9. b) This really was your reasoning for picking Ford. It didn’t prevent your downfall after which Ford became president anyway.