History Behind The Headlines

Last summer my wife and I were driving through the Border South en route to Memphis. On the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky, we tuned into an evangelical Christian radio station, where the presenters were discussing

 A package of sprats, vodka, buckwheat, matches, candles, a string and a piece of soap – perhaps not the perfect present for Christmas, but in the Siberian city of Tomsk the $29 parcels are proving

Imagining the end of the world is one of humanity’s most perverse pleasures. For decades, cinema-goers have been treated to apocalypse by rogue planet, asteroid, earth’s core overheating, earth’s core stopping, climate-changing super-storm, melting polar

'Turkish village becomes latest doomsday hotspot', ran one headline last week.  This is the news that 60,000 people are descending on a small Turkish village, where it is thought the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven:

If you believe The Daily Mail, we're all convinced that the world is going to end on 21st December 2012. Apparently people are stockpiling food and weapons, flocking to remote villages and heading for mystical

It is clear that Lord Justice Leveson knows his history; more interesting, in many ways, is the way that he is prepared to use it as a rhetorical weapon against his critics. The Executive Summary