In politics, beware the “Lord Jim” moment
Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim contains an important warning for those aspiring to political greatness. Jim is the young man who has everything – good looks, athleticism,…
Book Reviews
How the EU uses our cash to buy supporters
What do the following organisations have in common? University of Cambridge, English Nature, Natural England, University College London, Green Alliance, the Institute for…
Are ballots secret?
One thing to be thankful for, in a democracy like ours, is that the secrecy of the ballot box is sacrosanct – no-one can ever know how I voted. Or can they? It seems that, in…
WW1 to Arab Spring
How on earth did we end up with the horrible mess that is the Middle East today – and is it true that we in the west are largely to blame for it? There are, of course, no simple…
Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
There are dozens of books that have been on the “To Read” shelf in my imagination for many decades. The older I get, the more likely it is that most of them are destined to…
How close did Hitler come to an Atomic Bomb?
The disturbing answer is “a lot closer than you might think.” The received story of German nuclear development in World War II goes something like this. Hitler and the Nazis…
Was Charles Ponzi’s scheme a “Ponzi fraud”?
Mention the subject of financial fraud – especially pyramid schemes – and one name that springs to mind immediately is Charles Ponzi. He has given his name to the kind…
Was John Maynard Keynes really the Warren Buffet of his day?
A recently published paper by David Chambers, Elroy Dimson and Justin Foo of Cambridge University examines the investment record of eminent economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes…
Double crossing the Nazis
Most people interested in the Second World War know of the Double Cross organisation – the brilliant initiative by British Intelligence in which all the German spies who…
Perfume: the story of a murderer
Perfume is one of those books that stands almost completely alone in literature. Perhaps Crime and Punishment or American Psycho might be found on the same shelf but even they…