‘Better luck next time!’ – British sailors to Napoleon as he was transferred to the ship taking him to exile in St Helena.

The second programme in Niall Ferguson’s series on China opened with a chilling question. If we ask the Chinese to help with bail out western economies, does that mean that they will become our masters?  It is an interesting and sobering question.  But he then proceeded to spend the next hour answering a completely different

Growing up in the seventies I was a socialist.  I was a pretty moderate socialist, but a socialist nonetheless.  But as I thought things through and became more aware of how the world was, I began to realise that socialists had two huge problems.  The first was the USSR.  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

With the latest results just in from the process to select the Republican candidate just in, yet another upset has materialised with the front runner, Mitt Romney, failing to win any states.  This fits in beautifully with the narrative being applied to the story by the media.  Republican voters are, we are told, deeply unhappy

Niall Ferguson’s one hour history and sketch of China started with him admitting that he didn’t really understand it – in fact he feels like he is an alien when he visits.  Not a promising introduction, but he soon starts giving the lie to it by pointing out some of those obvious facts that stare

It is a good sign when a book doesn’t fit into an obvious category.  It is probably a nightmare for a librarian or a bookseller, but it is good news for the reader.  There is less risk that you are going to read the same old stuff you have read before – we all enjoy