In a fascinating and provocative article in the Sunday Times (April 28th), Rosamund Urwin discussed the possibility that Anthony Blunt, the ‘fourth man’ in the infamous ‘Cambridge Five’ Soviet spy ring, may have passed secrets to the Nazis in World War Two. Urwin’s article set out and summarised some new findings and a controversial fresh thesis being put forward by Robert Verkaik in his new book The Traitor of Arnhem (published by Headline publishers on May 9th, 2024). Sir Anthony Blunt (1907-1983), of course, was the art historian and very ‘establishment’ man who became Adviser for the Quee ..read more

Back in 2018 new claims were put forward that the British domestic Security Service, MI5, was not just involved with monitoring and collecting intelligence on political movements and individuals deemed as potential threats to the state in the post-war period, but was also involved in the ‘policing’ of moral standards at the cultural level. MI5 seemingly infiltrated the UK’s entertainment industry in the 1960s, with the objective of sabotaging and undermining Leftwing theatre and movie productions, and causing Communist and Trotskyite groups to lose substantial sums of money in the process. Ac ..read more

Just prior to the Covid-19 medical emergency and lockdown, I embarked on the delivery of a module on the role of conspiracy theory in history, and recently had the opportunity to run the module again. The course sought to address the very difficult question of why so many people appear to believe that ‘secret’ forces are at work in the world and allow themselves to be seduced and conned by the claim that there is no such thing as ‘accident’ in history. One of the conspiracy theorists I covered on the module was the former footballer and Green activist David Icke, author of books such as And th ..read more

Some brief exploration of the extent to which crude and racist historical revisionism has moved from the margins into the cultural mainstream of society can be a truly shocking experience. It is no exaggeration to say that conspiracy theory and its ugly child Holocaust Denial have taken on industrial-scale proportions in the early 21st Century. What many people still don’t seem to appreciate is the degree to which British conspiracists played a key role in this, beginning to sow the seeds almost immediately after the end of the War in 1945. Indeed, the early origins of the extremist attempt to ..read more

Although studies of Otto Skorzeny, said to be Hitler’s ‘favourite commando’, tended to be limited and were often of highly questionable quality for much of the post-war period, this situation appears to have changed in more recent years. Some qualitatively better research material has become available and, thus, serious historians of Nazi Germany have becoming increasingly interested in demythologizing and unpacking Skorzeny’s career and reputation. One such contribution to the growing historiography came in 2018, with Stuart Smith’s Otto Skorzeny: The Devil’s Disciple (Osprey publishers). Au ..read more

Back in 2014-2015 I spent some time in the archives investigating a still relatively under-researched aspect of women’s history, the anti-Suffrage groups that had emerged in Edwardian Britain. How did this come about? My general research on British history had focused on the collation of material on middle-class ‘defence’ and protest movements in south-west London and – when I was exploring some pre-1914 local sources – I increasingly encountered newspaper reports on the ‘direct action’ aspects of suffragette activities. In 1913, for example, two suffragettes set fire to the Tea Pavilion situ ..read more

If anybody still entertains any doubts about the extremely worrying authoritarian ambitions of former U.S. president Donald Trump, then it is important to consider what he said on the evening of Friday, 8th March, 2024. Holding a meeting and concert at his luxury residence at Mar-a-Lago, where he played host to the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (pictured), Trump was full of praise for his guest: ‘There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban… He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, “This is the way it’s going to be”, and that’s the end of it… He’s ..read more

Historians will have much to write about when they look back on current political affairs in America, and analysis of the rightwing brand of ‘populist’ politics will be a major aspect of this. When it comes to his desperate desire to move back into the White House, the former U.S. President Donald Trump has made some dangerously deluded claims, including that he is a ‘victim’ of ‘fake news’ put out by his political opponents. He has attacked the MSM (mainstream media) in particular, arguing that it is ‘liberal’ and ‘socialist’ and out to ‘get’ him through ‘political persecution’. Trump has als ..read more

There has inevitably been much speculation in the last two years about the ideological sources that have possibly influenced President Vladimir Putin’s brutal war against Ukraine and his seeming desire to reconstruct a pre-1989 Soviet Union, or even a mythologized version of an older Russian empire. One source of inspiration for Putin has undoubtedly been the ‘Greater Russia’ ideas of Aleksandr Dugin. However, I suspect that another, perhaps more indirect, influence on Putin was the late Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultra-nationalist politician who died of Covid-19 on 6th April, 2022, aged 75. Pu ..read more

Speaking at the 2023 CPAC (Conservative Political Action) conference, Donald Trump referred to the ‘epic battle’ he said he has always been engaged in against the ‘special interests’ who are out to destroy America. It was vintage Trump. The 2024 CPAC conference saw such obsessions fully on display again, with numerous speakers indulging in blatantly Trump-style conspiracy theory about the ‘deep state’, including former British PM Liz Truss and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage. An obsession with the supposed ‘secret’ forces who are out to ‘get’ him and weaken America runs deep in Trump’s psychol ..read more