view from bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] of the mid 1970s – control the money supply and you can control inflation – appealed because it was so simple. It took hold, particularly in the Conservative Party, where what became the Thatcherites adopted it and wrecked the British manufacturing economy with it between 1980 and 1984. Margaret Thatcher was a politician who […]

Tittle Tattle

Lobster Issue 62 (Winter 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: […] 5 concealed a steady decline in Labour support, both in terms of activism and electoral turnout, leading to the present situation in which a very orthodox and conservative Labour seems incapable of landing a punch on a coalition submerged in political and economic crisis. Along the way Gould, apparently a rather undistinguished advertising man,6 […]

General Władysław Sikorski and the B-24

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] on 31 March. By then he had also lunched at least twice at the Dorchester with General Sikorski and his influential British liaison officer Colonel Victor Cazalet, Conservative MP for Chippenham. A new timeline reveals that on Saturday, 10 May 1941, on the night of the heaviest-ever German bombing raid on London, Hess and […]

The Hotel Tacloban by Douglas Valentine

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: […] recount events which, by his own standards, filled him with shame. The story he told his son could not be uplifting or evidence that indeed the father’s conservative ideals had triumphed or were in any way worthy of emulation. Of course some of the feelings burdening the principal in the story cannot be attributed […]

Count Bonde and the search for a compromise peace 1939-1941

Lobster Issue 90 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] It would be interesting to know a bit more about him. Simon Matthews is writing a study of Winston Churchill’s period as First Lord of the Admiralty 1939-1940, for publication in 2026. Her son, Sir John Barlow, continued the political tradition sitting as a National Liberal and Conservative MP between 1945 and 1966. 8 5

Gone but not forgotten… (Donald Trump book reviews)

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] journalistic accounts of the Trump years, If Only They Didn’t Speak English and A Year at the Circus.1 These two resolutely mediocre volumes show how the BBC’s conservative even-handedness makes it unable to deal seriously with the likes of Trump and the MAGA movement. What of UnPresidented? This takes the form of a diary […]

Count Knut Bonde and the Search for a Compromise Peace 1939-1941

Lobster Issue

[…] It would be interesting to know a bit more about him. Simon Matthews is writing a study of Winston Churchill’s period as First Lord of the Admiralty 1939-1940, for publication in 2026. Her son, Sir John Barlow, continued the political tradition sitting as a National Liberal and Conservative MP between 1945 and 1966. 8 5

The Lost Peace by Richard Sakwa

Lobster Issue 88 (2024) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of either these days, at least on television. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised, given the revolving door between the BBC News and Current Affairs department and the Conservative Party.10 Scott Newton is Emeritus Professor of Modern British and International History at Cardiff University. I tried to cover some of these issues in my, ‘Historical […]

The Rise of New Labour: Into Office

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014) FREE

[PDF file]: […] excessively high exchange rate.’ – Wynne Godley, The Observer (Business) 23 August 1998. By the time Labour took office Brown and Blair had promised to toe the conservative line on economic policy: no income tax rises, no increased public spending, no attempts to use government to direct the economy; and no reacquisition of the […]

Is there a ‘political class’?

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: Is there a ‘political class’? Scott Newton It has become fashionable to argue that Britain is in the grip of its own ‘political class’. Most recently the idea has been promulgated by Peter Oborne, in his 2007 book, The Triumph of the Political Class. I have been sceptical about this, remembering the dominance of Oxbridge-educated […]

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