Over a long career, John Hardman has specialised to great effect in teasing out, from speeches, decrees, minutes, memoranda, letters, diaries and unsent drafts, the varied moods of French political de

The troubled history of US-China relations

Idi Amin is a historical figure synonymous with evil. Branded ‘Africa’s Hitler’ in newspaper headlines and immortalised in lurid books and documentaries detailing his regime’s many atrocities, Uganda’

The US Constitution as a straitjacket

The arts sector has long been unthinkingly in thrall to the supposedly “progressive” left but a coherent, coordinated, conservative strategy could, and should, shift the consensus

When General Francisco Franco died on 20 November 1975 – 39 years after the start of the brutal civil war that brought him to power – the prospect of a bloodless transition to democracy in Spain appea