The New Conservative

Peter Harris

David Lammy

Lammy’s Lament

David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary, is a man of contradictions. Despite having studied at Harvard Law School no less, he managed to balls up some pretty easy questions on Celebrity Mastermind some years ago. When asked who had won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 for her research into radiation, he gave Marie Antoinette […]

Lammy’s Lament Read More »

Dear Townies

‘Dear Townies’ Book Review

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which is found in his magnum opus The Republic, is used to illustrate how humans are ignorant of ultimate reality. It was written as an imagined dialogue between Plato’s brother and his mentor Socrates. According to Socrates, humanity is like people who are chained in a cave in a position

‘Dear Townies’ Book Review Read More »

Union Jack

Election Aftermath

As many countries in the EU swing rightwards, Britain has a new left-wing government with an eye-watering majority of 412 out of 650 seats. The Conservatives have clung on to a mere 121 seats. A flawed Brexit, income-crushing levels of taxation and inflation, and a surge in immigration meant that the electorate was in no

Election Aftermath Read More »

Hiking

To Speak or Not to Speak

In the summer of 1990, I graduated from academe’s cloisters and entered the mammonish world of sales. Frankly, it was a McJob as I had no idea what career to pursue. It meant I had to move to a market town quite a distance from my home town and which bordered some remote spaces where

To Speak or Not to Speak Read More »

Red triangles

Inverted Red Triangles

The late Anglo-American writer, Christopher Hitchens, once declared to journalist Alice Fordham the following: “My attitude to posters with swastikas on them has always been the same. They should be ripped down.” Hitchens was right: the swastika is viscerally provocative. Not for Hindus, of course, for whom it is an ancient symbol of good luck

Inverted Red Triangles Read More »

Remembrance

They Gave Their Today

Rightly do D-Day and the Normandy beach landings grip the imagination. Its scale was immense: it was the largest seaborne invasion in history involving thousands of boats, ships and aircraft and around 160,000 troops from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. (If I

They Gave Their Today Read More »

West Africa Squadron

A Monumental Failure

Not only are Woke convictions deciding which statues stay intact, they are now dictating which statues can be put up. It has made the news that Landsec, the commercial owner of Portsmouth’s Gunwharf Quays, has rejected plans for a statue honouring the heroic efforts of the sailors of the Royal West Africa Squadron in fighting

A Monumental Failure Read More »

Phoenix

Rising From the Ashes

One of the most satisfying things to witness is when a bullied victim finally stands up for himself, beats his tormentor in a fight and wins everyone’s respect. I was once such a person. I was eleven years old and a member of a church choir. Another choir boy who was two years older took

Rising From the Ashes Read More »