THE FIRST PART of this section concentrated on Britain’s relative economic decline in the 1960s and 1970s. Thatcher was well aware of the country’s reputation and on 13
MRS THATCHER is a much hated figure in Scotland even today. A retrospective assessment of her premiership in The National on 26 June 2018, for example,
SUPPOSING that the Taliban had never invited Osama bin Laden into Afghanistan or that he had never plotted the destruction of the Twin Towers, these
THE FRENCH ECONOMIST Jean Fourastie in 1979 published a landmark work entitled ‘Trente Glorieuses’ celebrating an era of progress since the war, three decades of
WHILE FRANCE celebrated VE Day on 8 May 1945, her Algerian citizens, who had also contributed to the liberation of Europe, were in a critical
SPRING THIS YEAR brought several anniversaries to France. Macron chose to commemorate the death of Napoleon two hundred years ago even though today the former
AS A TEENAGER in Scotland in the 1960s I joined the Liberal Party under the spell of Jo Grimond. I subsequently became Chairman of Glasgow
THE VERY ATTRACTIVE, beefcake actor, Henry Caville, who plays Superman and was runner-up to Daniel Craig for the role of Bond (and is sometimes tipped
DENNIS KAVANAGH is supposed to have commented recently that ‘Scottish politics has not been this much fun since Macbeth’. His quip is not quite accurate
AN EARTHQUAKE on 11 March 2011 caused a tsunami to hit the northeast coast of Japan. 18,500 people are believed to have died following the
THE SCOTTISH Language Society last year produced a series of small articles commemorating what it pleased to call ‘Scotland’s last uprising’ of April 1820: ‘Long
MAY 5 THIS YEAR will see the two hundredth anniversary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte. He is easily the best known Frenchman despite having
