Credit: Shutterstock A Matter of Obscenity Christopher Hilliard, Princeton University Press, 320pp, 2021, £30 KEN BELL follows the story of English law and ‘dirty books’ With its seventy-two pages of footnotes, Christopher Hilliard’s A Matter of Obscenity manages to combine the original archival research of the heavyweight historian with a lightness of touch that should…
Growing Up: Sex in the Sixties Peter Doggett, The Bodley Head, 400 pages, £25.00 KEN BELL finds a survey of Sixties sex is really about 2020s attitudes In Annus Mirabilis, Philip Larkin reflects famously: ‘Sexual intercourse beganIn nineteen sixty-three(which was rather late for me) -Between the end of the Chatterley banAnd the Beatles' first LP.’…
The Armchair General: Can You Defeat the Nazis? John Buckley, Century, £14.99 KEN BELL goes on the counterfactual offensive Many historians like to say that counter-factualism is a waste of time, at least until the port has been around the table twice and then they tend to become as keen as the rest of us…
Bleeding for Jesus: John Smyth and the Cult of the Iwerne Camps Andrew Graystone, Darton, Longman & Todd, £12.99 KEN BELL winces through a sad story of sadistic abuse and cover-up John Smyth QC had a public image in the 1970s and 1980s as a conservative activist who worked with Mary Whitehouse in her failed…
Credit: Shutterstock How to Stop Fascism Paul Mason, Allen Lane, 256 Pages, £20 KEN BELL finds a noted Labour intellectual fighting an imaginary enemy Paul Mason is one of those interesting characters who now seem to pop up everywhere, telling the rest of us what to believe. In his student days he was a member…
Chips and Honor Channon Henry “Chips” Channon, Diaries Vol. 2, 1938-1943 Edited by Simon Heffer, Hutchinson, 1,120 Pages, £35 KEN BELL renews his acquaintance with the famous Tory diarist The Conservative MP and socialite, Henry “Chips” Channon, was a brilliant writer with an acid wit who also had an amazing capacity to misunderstand the people…
On the Cusp: Days of ’62 David Kynaston, Bloomsbury, 239 P, £18.99 KEN BELL admires a study of 1962, but wonders why that year was singled out for attention David Kynaston must be the premier social historian of post-war Britain writing today, and his latest book is a fine, standalone work which really captures the…
Credit: Shutterstock The New Snobbery David Skelton, Biteback Publishing, 253 pp, £16.99 KEN BELL says many members of the middle classes have found ingenious new ways of disliking people Britain is notoriously obsessed with class, but now there is a new, ideological way of looking down on people. David Skelton, a native northeasterner who is…
Image: Wikimedia Commons The Diaries 1918-1938 Henry Channon, edited by Simon Heffer, Penguin, London, hb, 1,002 pages, £35 KEN BELL dives into an interwar atmosphere of complacency and privilege The complete diaries of Sir Henry “Chips” Channon are now being published and the first volume will be required reading for anyone interested in the interwar…
Image: Shutterstock Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis Serhii Plokhy, Allen Lane, 2021, 464 pages, £25 KEN BELL admires an unusually informed study of one of History’s nearest misses Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the first work to mine the KGB files that…