There is not much of a question of who controls the national myth of the Great War in Germany today. Nobody in particular seems to want to claim it. More interesting, however, is considering who has sought…
On July 24 1914 the British cabinet met to discuss the diplomatic situation in Europe, which had deteriorated rapidly since the assassination of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, a month before…
The Eastbourne Pier fire reveals much about our enduring love of the seaside. As we bemoan the loss of a symbol of coastal fun and pleasure, the disaster and recent suspicions of arson also hint at the…
In Belgium as in Australia, there are no longer any surviving veterans of the Great War to witness the commemorations of its centenary. However, just as in Australia, there remains an immense interest…
In vogue among the political left during the events in Paris in May 1968, the French term récupération refers to the danger of “the Establishment”, be it the government or a political party, seizing on…
When prime minister Tony Abbott declared at Villers-Bretonneux that “no place on earth has been more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than these fields in France”, Australian attention focused again…
With the exquisite turn of phrase for which she was so highly regarded, Barbara Tuchman once likened the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war against Serbia of 28 July 1914 to an example of “the bellicose…
Ouch. I think my entire body physically cringed when I came across the latest story of a misjudged tweet gone viral this week: the case of Breanna Mitchell, the naïve teenager and self-styled “Princess…
The BBC Proms, with justification, is flaunted as the world’s largest and most significant annual music festival. A bronze bust of the conductor Sir Henry Wood, is placed in front of the organ facing the…
Booker-shortlisted novelist David Mitchell is currently launching his new short story The Right Sort – on Twitter. The award-winning author of Cloud Atlas and number9dream is tweeting his story twice daily…
Wherever does our prime minister get his technique for historical analysis? Just before last week’s chaotic carbon tax repeal scenes in Canberra, prime minister Tony Abbott offended the People’s Republic…
Karl Marx warned against conjuring up the past to explain the present, but really, we have been somewhere very like the Ukraine before. Benjamin Disraeli stood in the British parliament 150 years ago condemning…
Henry Irving, School of Advanced Study, University of London
“Keep Calm and Carry On” is now one of the most recognisable slogans in British history. Its resilient message has become extraordinarily commonplace, with the phrase used to sell everything from mugs…
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs … And tell sad stories of the death of kings These melancholic words, uttered by Shakespeare’s Richard II, tell us of a preoccupation with death and mortality…
Richard Strauss saw – and heard – it all. Born before German unification, he lived through two world wars and the division of Germany into East and West, dying that same year, in 1949. Musically he also…
It might seem a stretch to say history has been unkind to the Vandals. After all, this barbarian group did as much as anyone to sound the last rites of the Roman Empire in the west. They captured the rich…
Why is AFL the main sport in Victoria and the other southern States while New South Wales and Queensland follow rugby? That’s long been a vexed question, but we may now be closer to an answer. In Melbourne…
I clearly remember the BBC news on February 23, 1981. The second item concerned an attempted coup in Spain in which armed soldiers marched into the Cortes (parliament) and took its members hostage. Their…
Think of medieval food and a whole range of not especially dignified images come to mind; Monty Python’s Holy Grail has a lot to answer for. Mud was far from being a constituent part of the diet of the…
It’s 50 years since Mods and Rockers rumbled by the sea in Margate, Broadstairs and Brighton; since their images were captured for posterity in iconic black and white photos of deck chairs being thrown…