Hitler and hot jazz

“…Strictly prohibited is the use of instruments alien to the German spirit (so-called cowbells, flexatone, brushes, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instruments into a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl (so-called wa-wa, hat, etc.)…” The Nazis hated a lot of people: Slavs, Jews, the disabled, Jesse Owens. And they [...]

Khrushchev in water wings: on Mao, humiliation, and the origins of the Sino-Soviet split

“When Mao turned up at the talks of August 3 dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, Khrushchev immediately suspected trouble, and his fears were realized when an aide produced an outsize pair of green bathing trunks and Mao insisted that his guest join him in his outdoor pool…” Relations between Communist China and Soviet Russia [...]

Closing the Pigeon Gap

Military, economic and indeed political history has often been driven by fear that, on the other side of the hill, some perceived enemy is making all-too-rapid progress in developing dangerous new technology. From the Dreadnought race of the early 1900s to the fictitious Missile Gap that so bothered the Americans in the late 1950s – [...]

On heroic self-sacrifice

In 1887, painter G.F. Watts was inspired by an idea: commemorate the everyday heroism of men, women and children who had lost their lives trying to save another’s. Not without struggle, his vision became the modest monument that is the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice at Postman’s Park, a tiny sliver of greenery amid the hubub [...]

Colonel Parker: murderer?

The Colonel always was a mystery. But that was very much the way he liked it. It was, of course, a tough trick to pull off, because the Colonel’s name was Tom Parker, and Tom Parker managed Elvis Presley. Since Elvis was the biggest name in the entertainment industry, his manager could hardly help appearing [...]

The mysterious Mr. Zedzed, the wickedest man in the world

Late in November 1927, an elderly Greek man sat in his mansion in Paris and tended a fire. Every time it flickered and threatened to die, he reached to one side and tossed another bundle of papers or a leather-bound book into the grate. For two days the old man fed the flames, at one [...]

The Monster of Glamis

“If you could even guess the nature of this castle’s secret,” said Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore, “you would get down on your knees and thank God it was not yours.” That awful secret was once the talk of Europe. From perhaps the 1840s until 1905, the Earl’s ancestral seat at Glamis Castle, in the Scottish [...]

Alone against Antarctica

For some it is the wind; for some, the terrible cold. For others, it is the endless, howling blankness of the landscape that drains resolve, or the blinding glare of sun on fresh-laid snow, or the week-long blizzards that pin intruders inside tents that groan under the weight of drifts of snow. Not even the [...]

The Christmas Truce

Even at the distance of a century, no war seems more terrible than World War I. In the four years between 1914 and 1918, it killed or wounded more than 25 million people–peculiarly horribly, and (in popular opinion, at least) for less apparent purpose than did any other war before or since. Yet there were [...]

On hidden history

“The best stories from history lie beyond the margins of textbooks, says the historian. He tells us about five extraordinary tales from the past, from visions of the Virgin Mary to the golden age of American con artist.” Here’s the text of a long interview that I gave to the brilliant The Browser site about [...]