Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 43

I take part in a discussion of the morality of swearing, on BBC Radio 4's 'The Moral Maze'

You may listen here

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wz56

PETER HITCHENS: Yet another slice of our happiness is gone for ever with the closure of a baker's shop during the Covid panic

This is Peter Hitchens��� Mail on Sunday column

In an age of poncy, expensive sourdough bread as dense as a black hole, and of steam-baked supermarket loaves, it is good and rare to find proper English bread, baked as it should be. 

Few delicacies in the world beat the taste of new white bread spread with salted butter. Where I live, in an ancient city where progress is treated with proper suspicion, we have for many years still been able to do this.

We also still have the remnants of a real...

An article in The Lamp Magazine - a review of a new book by Helen Andrews on the Boomers who are now revolutionising our society

You can read it here

 

https://thelampmagazine.com/2021/06/03/partially-reformed/

PETER HITCHENS: What is the point of tourists' checks and tests if migrants can just walk into Dover?

This is Peter Hitchens��� Mail on Sunday column

Compare and contrast. A British family, who have saved all year for a holiday after long months of house arrest and general dreariness, have to interrupt their break in Portugal to go home, on the stern orders of the Government in London. 

Before them lie hours of bureaucracy, unpleasant and ruinously expensive nasal swabs, long forms to fill in, shuffling queues, more nasal swabs, more queues, and then days of being snooped on at home.

You���l...

Bridey's Bombshell - Is Evelyn Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited' wrong about the Roman Catholic Church's rules on divorce?

                                                             Bridey���s Bombshell

 

I have no sectarian purpose here. I don't wish to attack a Church I don't belong to. I've always rather admired the intransigence of the Roman Catholic Church on marriage. It helps to keep the others honest, or at least to make them feel bad about not being honest.

 

This passage from the original version of 'Brideshead Revisited' (the book about which this post is mainly written) was mysteriously cut out of ...

WE no longer want to be free - an interview I have given to 'Unlocked'

...may be watched here :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qy6ZG93aSw

Common Humanity? An Extraordinary Episode during the Nazi occupation of Paris

Try to suggest to the Left that their hatred for Fascists and Nazis is not perhaps as great and principled as they say, and you can expect an angry response.  Mentioning the cynical co-operation of Communist and Nazi trade union organisations in a Berlin public transport strike in 1933 is a good way of annoying any Communists you know. But it is little-remembered now. Most even forget that far greater event, the Molotov-Ribbentrop (aka Stalin-Hitler or Nazi-Soviet) Pact of August 1939. https://h...

Common Humanity? An Extraorinary Episode during the Nazi occupation of Paris

Try to suggest to the Left that their hatred for Fascists and Nazis is not perhaps as great and principled as they say, and you can expect an angry response.  Mentioning the cynical co-operation of Communist and Nazi trade union organisations in a Berlin public transport strike in 1933 is a good way of annoying any Communists you know. But it is little-remembered now. Most even forget that far greater event, the Molotov-Ribbentrop (aka Stalin-Hitler or Nazi-Soviet) Pact of August 1939. https://h...

Fresh Bad News about the Great War of 1914-1918

Some recent reading: ���Plotting for Peace��� by Daniel Larsen. Cambridge University Press 

I am amazed that so much history of the Great War of 1914 still concentrates on the Western Front and on the fighting there. I have many times here praised Adam Tooze���s superb ���The Deluge���. This, instead of another wearsome run round the cliches, deals with the politics, diplomacy and economics of the war, and gives the Eastern Front proper prominence. Now a fascinating new book by Daniel Larsen ��...

Abortion, an Honest day's Work, Dominic Cummings and Restraining Power. My latest conversation with Mike Graham

Our exchange on Monday 31st May 2021 is here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1looeT-R4BY