Jonathan Boff

The RFU have given Borthwick all the time with players and facilities he has asked for and yet all the elite squad perform at much worse level for 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 than they do week in and out for their clubs: it can only be a coaching problem

Box kicking has been awful all season for England so why ever double down on it this time. Brain dead.
And still not looking like a team but 15 blokes who first met in the changing room

He’s the problem, not part of the solution. Rank performance

Would definitely be at least 90% successsful

Wise words as ever from @ldfreedman.bsky.social

Yes perhaps that’s it.
Until now I thought he was mainly motivated by being tomorrow’s headline every day but maybe he’s starting to wonder about History.
I can’t speak for History but I know how this historian will remember him.

One bit I cannot square in my mind is what deal Trump the deal-maker thinks he is getting from Netanyahu as the quid pro quo for helping him eliminate the Iranian threat

The smart move for Tehran now would be to announce their ‘unconditional surrender’ at once.
Them saying it will mean as little as DJT demanding it, but it will confuse him terribly.

This book will be excellent. But if you really love Mercia I’d recommend coming to study History in the heart of Mercia, at the University of Birmingham!

Another plug for my column this week, about the economics of night-time work...

. Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is Pete Hegseth.
As Clausewitz so nearly said.

Geologists in Patagonia have found rocks with more signs of intelligence than him

Great to speak to the World War I podcast about Framing the FWW, check it out here: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/f... @draefox.bsky.social @mpmfinch.bsky.social @univpressofkansas.bsky.social

great opportunity for a fully-funded PhD - on the history of the social sciences, demography, and nutritional sciences of blockades

werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Any Edwardian historian worth his salt would knock that off in a weekend

Why don’t you do a trilogy?

There’s only one bloke who walks on water in Birmingham and it ain’t him

It’s actually quite difficult to write something that isn’t outdated by the time it appears in print at the moment.
I think I’ve just about managed it.

No, and nasty and evil as the Iranian regime is, it ain’t a threat to the world as terrible as Nazi Germany, either

💯

Iraqis duly rebelled.
The USA was in no position provided to help the rebels and the regime killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people.

‘the Iraqi people should put [Saddam] aside, and that would facilitate the resolution of all these problems that exist and certainly would facilitate the acceptance of Iraq back into the family of peace-loving nations.’
President George HW Bush, 1 March 1991

‘There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: and that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside… and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.’
President George HW Bush, 15 February 1991

No but a higher oil price extends Putin’s ability to finance the war

The book examines underexplored crises, draws on new archival material, and includes fresh interviews with decision-makers such as Tony Blair & George Robertson.

Available for $35 if you order directly from Georgetown using the discount code TGUF.
press.georgetown.edu/Book/Transat... 2/2

Another crisis in UK-US relations. How does the alliance survive repeated ruptures?

Greg Kennedy & I brought together 14 brilliant scholars to answer that in Transatlantic Storms in Anglo-American Relations: How the Alliance Weathers Crises.

Out today with Georgetown University Press. 1/2

Trump can’t expect unconditional support one way while only offering an instrumental relationship in the other direction.
That said, Starmer has yet again made a hash of establishing and explaining a clear policy so far and yet again failed to exercise defence leadership in Europe.
2/2

The alliance between 🇺🇸 and 🇬🇧 has always - rightly - operated within the limits of national interests.
Starmer should feel just as free to attach conditions to support to the USA over Iran and the Middle East as Trump clearly feels able to do to helping Europe over Ukraine and Russia. 1/2

One reassuring thing: there is so little money in what we do that the incentives for automation (were that even possible) are very low compared with other professions such as accountancy or law. And by the time they get around to us some giant AI eff up in one of those will have discredited it all

Framing the First World War: How Diverging Views Shaped a Global Conflict Published in First World War Studies (Ahead of Print, 2026)

My review of excellent new book ‘Framing the First World War’ edited by the dream team @draefox.bsky.social @dmorganowen.bsky.social and Michael Finch is now in @fwwsjournal.bsky.social
50 free eprints available here:
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/VRRIQ...