Articles and lectures

What if Keynes had drowned in 1916

He very nearly went with Kitchener on the ill-fated voyage of HMS Hampshire, but pulled out at the last moment.  I had a go at thinking about the way the world  would have developed over the past century if Keynes had gone down with the ship – and Lloyd George, who also should have been on board.

The moment of lost economic innocence

This is my contribution to the evening of lectures at the National Maritime Museum on my book Eminent CorporationsIt is about the destruction of the pirate port of Port Royal (30 Sept 2010).

The lost voyages of John Cabot

My lecture at the National Maritime Museum in the Boats that Built Britain series (17 June 2010).

Working harder than medieval peasants?

Why being a medieval peasant had some serious upsides that we could learn from today (Guardian, May 2010).  You can also hear my Canadian interview on CBC about this (it is at 13 mins 45 secs).

The strange revival of fairies

Just when you thought they had been consigned to the bottom of the garden, the fairies are back (Bloom, Autumn 2008).

We have been here before

My contribution to the essay collection Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth (Constable, 2008).

Twelfth century economics and today

The discovery of some twelfth century bones in London reveal the big lie of contemporary economics (Radical Economics, 2005).

Frederick Winslow Taylor

The founder of time and motion study – and of the prophet of measurement (BBC History Magazine, 2003).

Hilaire Belloc and liberalism

The prophet of Distributism, the danger of the Servile State and his uneasy relationship with the Liberal Party (Journal of Liberal History, 2003).

Spinning against Hitler

Noel Newsome and the BBC European Service in World War II, the greatest ever exponent of the art of good propaganda (New Statesman, 2001).

Richard the Lionheart’s journey in disguise

How to retrace Richard the Lionheart’s journey across Europe.