Henry Oliver

David Cameron’s appointment as Foreign Secretary revives the lost tradition of former Prime Ministers staying in politics and serving in government. Like Arthur Bafour and Alec Douglas-Home before him, Cameron is a patrician, widely thought to be second-rate, and left office in troubled circumstances. But like them, he is underrated.  Cameron is Britain’s last successful […]

With the revival of faith, flag and family at the recent National Conservatism conference, the inevitable questions have gone up about whether the Tory party is becoming Americanised, whether they believe in anything other than power, and what happened to ‘one nation’ conservatives? Many answers run to the same conclusion: this is a populist takeover […]

Does Britain have too many old buildings? It’s no secret that an aesthetic aversion to modern architecture is one of the reason Britain consistently fails to build the housing and infrastructure we desperately need. But if modern buildings are often too ugly to earn their place in the public realm, so are many of the […]

Twentieth century advertising was created by two titans, both with a background in door-to-door sales. One became the darling of Madison Avenue, wrote successful books, is still routinely quoted as an authority in the industry, and inspired Mad Men. That was David Ogilvy, who went from Aga salesman to advertising mogul, via a stint as […]

Twentieth century advertising was created by two titans, both with a background in door-to-door sales. One became the darling of Madison Avenue, wrote successful books, is still routinely quoted as an authority in the industry, and inspired Mad Men. That was David Ogilvy, who went from Aga salesman to advertising mogul, via a stint as […]

Keir Starmer has big constitutional plans if he becomes the next Prime Minister. The Labour leader has said he wants to abolish the Lords as it currently exists, replacing it with an elected upper house. There’s a simple reason this plan won’t work: Starmer wants his Lords 2.0 to remain an advisory…

Shortly before Boris won big in 2019, Philip Collins wrote that the best thing Boris’ detractors could hope for was a thumping majority. Like the Liberal party in 1906, when they won one of the biggest majorities in British history, this would be a victory from which Boris would never recover. Winning big was indeed […]

Russian culture is being cancelled everywhere. The Royal Opera House called off a residency of the Bolshoi. The BBC scrapped performances of Tchaikovsky. In Canada, Alexander Malofeev, the piano prodigy, was cancelled even after he denounced Putin’s war. The same thing happened to filmmaker Kirill Sokolov at the Glasgow Film festival — whose film was […]

Russian culture is being cancelled everywhere. The Royal Opera House called off a residency of the Bolshoi. The BBC scrapped performances of Tchaikovsky. In Canada, Alexander Malofeev, the piano prodigy, was cancelled even after he denounced Putin’s war. The same thing happened to filmmaker Kirill S…