The Spanish city of Valladolid has an Irish historical connection. It was there that Red Hugh O’Donnell was buried in 1602. Now, thanks to an archaeological dig aimed at finding his long-lost tomb, the connection is back in the news. Known as Red Hugh because of his hair colour, he was the kind of historical…
D-Day the Sixth of June was based on an award-winning novel by Canadian journalist Lionel Shapiro
Turner Classic Movies marked the American Memorial Day weekend by showing a string of war films, one of which was D-Day the Sixth of June. Released in 1956 and based on a novel published the previous year, I’d seen it at the local cinema in Dublin, Ireland, more than 60 years ago. Back then, I’d…
Was Adolf Eichmann a monster or just a loyal officer in a role that largely revolved around establishing train schedules?
On May 23, 1960, Israel announced the capture of Adolf Eichmann. An undercover Israeli security services team had snatched him 12 days earlier in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and smuggled him out of the country by air. The story was an immediate international sensation. If you were only moderately conversant with the Holocaust, you might never…
The former U.K. prime minister had a radical streak and a thirst for combat that the men she led didn’t share
Margaret Thatcher had her final prime ministerial audience with the Queen on Nov. 28, 1990. Despite having won three consecutive general elections and never losing a parliamentary vote of confidence, she was evicted from office against her will. The dramatic story is comprehensively told in Herself Alone, the third and final instalment of Charles Moore’s…
Private Eddie Slovik, executed 75 years ago, didn't deserve his fate
If you’re rewatching Downton Abbey on PBS, you’ll know the plotline about the cook’s nephew who was shot for desertion during the First World War. And such things did occur. For instance, the British and Commonwealth military executed 306 men in those circumstances. They were, as the stark phrase put it, shot at dawn. The…
Author Valerie Hansen demonstrates that the concept of international trading networks and linkages goes back a very long way
Valerie Hansen is an American academic who teaches history at Yale. She also writes books, of which 2012’s The Silk Road is perhaps the best known. Hansen’s latest book is The Year 1000. Provocatively subtitled When Explorers Connected the World – and Globalization Began, it’s a recounting of interconnectedness in the five centuries between 1000…
Disney’s 1950s version of the life of King of the Wild Frontier was, well, mostly historically correct
If you were a child in the 1950s, the chances are that Davy Crockett was briefly a part of your life. On December 15, 1954, the ABC television network broadcast the first episode of a new Disney mini-series loosely based on his exploits, two more episodes followed in January and February 1955, and a concluding…
Liberal bias among researchers has implications for the quality of the research
When it comes to discussion of public policy, the term evidence-based has assumed mantra status. Those who deploy it immediately grab the high ground, inoculating their views against criticism from the less informed – which generally translates into anyone who disagrees with them. It’s a neat trick if you can pull it off. Contrarians, mind…
Primary, a 1960 documentary, shows Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey battling it out in the Wisconsin primary trenches
I recently came across a gem on the Turner Classic Movies schedule. Called Primary, it’s a 1960 documentary. The film is ostensibly a fly-on-the-wall record of the final days of Wisconsin’s 1960 Democratic presidential primary. In an era with far fewer such contests, it pitted U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts against U.S. Sen.…
Who defines what’s essential and should thus be sourced domestically, even if it’s more expensive to do so?
Autarky is an uncommon word that’s become a lot more common lately. It defines the extent to which a country chooses to be self-sufficient, thereby abjuring international trade. Typically, autarky is seen as an impoverishing thing. And it usually is. But in the current debate, it’s a red herring of the highest order. In order…