Jonathan Boff

Don’t elect Presidents who can’t be bothered to read a book.

He is a very good example of how time lends enchantment. Now remembered with a chuckle as an old-style principled parliamentarian, but in reality an unscrupulous old Stalinist rogue who’d gladly hang his own grandma

Mehr dazu 👇🏼
www.zms.bundeswehr.de/de/mediathek...

For someone who thinks he’s good at cutting deals, DJT sure seems to spend a lot of time giving other people what they want for not much in return

Emergency Exits: Discussion Day The end of the Second World War did not mean peace for everyone; it accelerated the fight for independence across the British Empire. In a major day of discussion and debate from the IWM Institute, a ...

Privileged to speak with talented colleagues today about colonial violence at the Imperial War Museum. I’ve been researching this in the IWM’s archives since 2002 and finally, in 2026, we are discussing the conflicts of the 1940s and 1950s.
www.iwm.org.uk/events/emerg...

If you are going to change regime, it’s a good idea to know what you want the new one to be like and to be able to help it happen.

Oh I think we can all agree that Charlotte embodies the new Conservative Party.
In her inability to get anyone to vote for her, if nothing else.

I have written the book, anyway.
I _think_ it’s good, but that’s for others to judge, of course.

We need a good book on how economic statecraft developed in the modern world and how understanding that history might help us practise it today.
The good news is: I’ve written it.
The bad news is: it won’t be out until next year.

Opinion: The US and other governments are embracing ‘economic statecraft’ believing it can enhance national security in a dangerous world, placate some voters and boost development, writes Patrick Foulis, an FT contributing editor. ft.trib.al/xT2JkkI

Nihil de mortuis nisi bonum is keeping me quiet today

I hope it’s the last we have heard of him but I fear it won’t be

Was left.
Definitely not Left now.

Bogof on jokes last night

Damned autocorrect - pest, not priest

Let’s hope this is the last we hear of this turbulent priest

It’s 2 months since I relaunched my history blog & I’m loving writing history again.

I’d love you to subscribe (it’s free!) or to share with others interested in the World Wars, British Empire, & historical reads both fact & fiction.

And in case you missed any posts, here’s my 3 favourites so far:

Dishing It Out, Taking It Writing and Reading

New newsletter, in which I consider stinky book reviews and overlong speeches

Cover of book with text in yellow reading: The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, overlaid on an image of an angel in seventeenth-century dress with wings and a long gun.

Hello Bluesky! My new book, THE FIREARM REVOLUTION, is out on 14 April. It’s about how a new technology changed society, and how hard it was to control. Here’s a little thread of what’s inside:

Too kind

Learning from history requires sophistication and skill If you reckon you have an understanding of international politics today, you probably haven’t been listening properly. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump are making histor...

My review of Odd Arne Westad’s The Coming Storm, out in @thespectator1828.bsky.social today:

spectator.com/article/lear...

God the TV people made a mess of that ending

Controversial Opinion: Lord of the Rings would have been a better book if he hadn’t finished it

I find it hard to think of anything that interests me enough to write one book about it, never mind three.

This book will be hot stuff. Highly recommended. I shall be saving up my pocket money, that’s for sure.

Yes. Mind you, we all make a living however we best can and if I had to go on the record with intelligent and interesting thoughts 2 or 3 times a week, I reckon I’d push the envelope sometimes.

More accurately - it is possible that the utility of force is in decline (although I don’t really see why it should be, myself - violence still seems like a depressingly good way of getting what one wants) but bad examples like IRA, AFG and UKR do not provide good evidence for that being true.

It’s not that force itself is losing utility - it’s just that we’ve been using it wrong: in Iraq and Afghanistan the USA and its allies tried to find military solutions to political problems; and Russia catastrophically misread Ukraine.

Oh damn, my version control has gone to hell and I have different 3 different versions of my ms that I now need to reintegrate
🤬

Economic Statecraft and the Federal Institutional Architecture Editor’s note: This article is the second in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft

The U.S. government organizes its economic statecraft around instruments. It should be organizing it around strategic ends.