5 d. ago World's most powerful warship arrives in Europe as US flexes muscles over global tensions

The USS Gerald R Ford CVN 78 is the world's largest aircraft carrier and has docked in Marseille, France, alongside the guided-missile destroyer USS Winston S Churchill DDG 81

Events

7 d. ago A personal platypus: the strange tale of Winston Churchill’s ‘magnificently idiotic’ wartime request

The wartime British PM was due to receive a monotreme named after him but it mysteriously died en route. German submarines were blamed – but was that the truth?Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best readsThere is a photo – or at least a “fabled” photo – that would tie up a lot of loose ends in the strange story of Winston Churchill’s platypuses.Recent research has revived the tale of how the British prime minister asked Australia to send him a live monotreme at the height of the second world war. Sadly his namesake, Winston, died just two days before landing in England in 1943 in now disputed circumstances. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago The Guardian view on statues: new monuments reflect changing values and reinvigorate the public realm | Editorial

It is refreshing to see women’s achievements celebrated, and statuary become more representative of a diverse nationEfforts to ensure that modern values are reflected in public sculpture began well before the Black Lives Matter protests five years ago. Those demonstrations saw the statue of the Bristol slave trader Edward Colston dragged from its pedestal and dumped in the harbour, while multiple Confederate monuments were removed from cities in the southern US.Statues in Britain have gradually reflected evolving social values. A statue of the suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst was unveiled in Westminster in 1930, two years after women were finally granted the vote on equal terms to men. Nelson Mandela joined Winston Churchill in Parliament Square in 2007. The nurse Mary Seacole became the first named black, Caribbean woman to be honoured with a UK statue in 2016. In the same year, the Monumental Welsh Women campaign was established. It set itself a target of five statues, and ha...

Politics

3 w. ago Fake Or Fortune guest speechless as 'painting by Sir Winston Churchill' worth huge sum

A man who paid a fraction of that could make a life-changing amount if the picture of Clemintine Churchill is proved to have been painted by the revered wartime Prime Minister

Politics

3 w. ago Britain is great at muddling through. But imagine if its leaders knew where they were heading | Timothy Garton Ash

Starmer’s successful ‘reset’ with Europe highlights an underlying incoherence. The only rational long-term strategy is to rejoin the EU, but our politics is far removed from thatLike a chronic ailment, strategic incoherence gnaws at everything Britain does in the world. Keir Starmer’s real achievement in resetting relations with mainland Europe – witness the recent visits of the French president Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Friedrich Merz – does not obscure, and in a way even highlights, this deeper confusion.After 1945, Winston Churchill envisioned Britain’s global role at the intersection of three circles: the British Commonwealth and (then still) empire; the Europe whose postwar recovery and unification he strongly supported; and the United States. As Commonwealth countries have formed stronger ties elsewhere, the first circle is no longer of strategic significance. Having committed itself in the 1970s to the most developed political and economic form of the second c...

Politics

3 w. ago Britain 'not safe' and citizens 'should have food stocks at home' for war

The grandson of Second World War prime minister Sir Winston Churchill was among those calling for people to take steps

Society

3 w. ago Britain and its people are not safe, former Nato chief warns Parliament

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen said the UK is lacking in ammunition, training, people, logistics, and medical capacity.

Events

3 w. ago Readers' Letters: Give Edinburgh's Adam Smith statue the Winston Churchill treatment

A reader says the memorial to one of Scotland’s most fa mous sons should be given an overdue clean-up

Politics

3 w. ago Winston Churchill’s Former Home Offers Five Double Bedrooms and Access to London’s Private Eccleston Square

Winston Churchill’s Former Home Offers Five Double Bedrooms and Access to London’s Private Eccleston Square  Mansion Global

Politics