David Horspool

Jan 5, 2025 | theoldie.co.uk | David Horspool |Marcus Bull

The Great Siege of 1565 was a crucial clash of religions and empires In around December 1564, Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire for more than 40 years, issued a decree. ‘I intend to conquer the island of Malta and I have appointed Mustafa Pasha as commander of the campaign. The island of Malta is a headquarters for infidels.’ What the Sultan wanted, the Sultan got.

Dec 10, 2024 | theoldie.co.uk | David Horspool

When I lived in west London, I used to walk past him on my way to the Tube every day. St Volodymyr, ‘Ruler of Ukraine 980–1015’, as the inscription on Leo Mol’s statue has it. If I had happened to be at this spot in Holland Park in May 1988, I would have seen a gathering of the senior churchmen of Ukraine in all their finery, Orthodox and Catholic, celebrating the unveiling of a statue to a founding father of a nation that was, at the time, still in the unwelcome embrace of the Soviet Union.

Dec 4, 2024 | theoldie.co.uk | David Horspool

"The Oldie is an incredible magazine - perhaps the best magazine in the world right now" Graydon Carter, founder of Air Mail and former Editor of Vanity Fair Give The Oldie for Xmas and save 50% Subscribe History | By David Horspool New show in Oxford is full of dodgy prophets A few years ago, I found myself in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Room of the British Library, reading a prophecy.

Nov 27, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Michael Taylor |Devoney Looser |Franklin Nelson |David Horspool

How has Ireland become one of the powerhouses of global rugby despite an island population of only seven million and at least three sports (football, Gaelic football and hurling) that command more popular attention? More to the point, on an island of so many historical divisions, why is it that rugby (in which the island of Ireland competes as a whole) has been so successful in addressing – or at least not aggravating – those issues of nationality, faith, class and culture?

Nov 7, 2024 | theoldie.co.uk | David Horspool

A hundred years ago, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig wrote, Germany dodged a bullet: ‘During 1923, the swastikas disappeared, the storm troops and the name of Adolf Hitler all but fell into oblivion. Nobody thought of him any more as a possible political factor.’ Writing this in his memoir in 1941, Zweig knew that he and his contemporaries had been wrong. He was so despairing that, a year later, in exile in Brazil, he and his wife took a lethal overdose of barbiturates.