The spectre of Winston Churchill
The great wartime leader continues to haunt British politics and identity.
BySecond World War
The myths of Blitz spirit
Steve McQueen’s new film suggests the Second World War was not simply a time of uncomplicated national unity.
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Inside the court of Adolf Hitler
Richard J Evans’s group biography of the Third Reich’s enforcers provides a revelatory account of the Nazi mind.
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Marc Bloch: a warning from Europe’s past
According to Emmanuel Macron, the best analysis of the dangers facing the continent today comes from a French historian who…
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The silent stones of Europe’s wars
Eighty years after D-Day, how should Britain remember those who died?
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Hitler, Putin and the information wars
Peter Pomerantsev’s new book shows how Second World War propaganda tactics are being used by the Kremlin today.
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Coco Chanel’s second coming
The V&A’s exhibition focuses on the designer’s clothes – with little attention given to her equally spectacular life.
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Churchill and the quest for greatness
Throughout his career, Britain’s wartime prime minister studied how other leaders – Roosevelt, Attlee, Stalin and Gandhi – exercised power.
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In defence of “what if?”
Why counterfactual history is an essential tool for understanding the present.
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The month of two D-Days
History will record this deed as an achievement of the highest order.
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How to survive a nuclear holocaust
A luxury hotel protects the affluent in Sven Holm’s Termush, a rediscovered 1967 dystopia that sheds light on our own…
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In 2013, few could have predicted the decade of political convulsions to come
In the ten years since our centenary edition the world has darkened considerably – and war has returned to Europe.
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Babi Yar: a harrowing masterpiece of Ukraine under Nazi rule
Anatoly Kuznetsov’s classic account of the 1941 massacre of Ukrainians is republished as Kyiv suffers the ravages of war again.
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From the NS archive: Back to all that
11 January 1958: Robert Graves and the writing of the two world wars.
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We shouldn’t demonise Winston Churchill – or deify him
The point of history is to see people and situations in the round rather than to succumb to satisfying myths.
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Eric Ravilious’s visions of war and peace in England
The artist, who died 80 years ago, aged 39, found a bucolic beauty even in military action.
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The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: how Putin exploited a wartime myth
There are echoes of the invasion of Ukraine in the epic battle for Stalingrad, but this time Russia is on…
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History’s long shadow falls over Russia and Ukraine
Wars have rules, and those who ignore them are apt to achieve surprise, simply by being stupid.
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Molotov cocktails and the Northern Lights: Finland’s Winter War against Russia
Art student Bonar Dunlop was one of thousands of foreign volunteers who fought alongside the Finns in 1939-40.
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