[youngian]

If you showed someone from 1947, 1907, 1847 or 1807 what ordinary life is like today, their eyes would almost pop out with disbelief and envy.

I thought the country had gone to hell in handcart overrun by criminals, foreigners, liberals, gays and Muslims taking away peoples' culture.

[Boiler]

I often wonder what my father would have made of the smartphone, or of cars that can be parked using either a phone app (Mercedes) or via a touchscreen in the car's key (BMW).

No, that's called an enquiring mind. Disbelief, maybe? Envy? No. I think Dad - a man who saw life under both Hitler and Stalin and was a staunch Conservative - would revolt against what we have now.

[Chris S]

I knew before I opened the article that it would only ever be left wing PC zealots who could be hysterical. Pretty standard characterisation of the other side as over-emotional loonies I find distasteful whoever it comes from.

[davidjay]

Last year it was "You lost. Get over it". The years of liberal left PC domination were over and the backlash had begun. They were in charge now and the rest of us had better watch out.

Now it's "Waaaaah, they won't let us do what we want". Which is strange considering how much they were gloating back then.

[Andy McDandy]

Sandbrook's histories of the latter half of the 20gh century were largely cut and paste jobs from Tony Benn's diaries. I read that article and got the impression that it was at the very least dictated by Dacre.

[Killer Whale]

[Messianic Trees]

The useful idiot: Jeremy Corbyn's assignations with a secret agent were part of the gullible British Left's love affair with a totalitarian Russian regime that murdered millions

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... BROOK.html

As a historian, I am sorry to say that my own profession was particularly culpable. The most infamous example was probably the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, even now a hero to many on the Left, who, disgracefully, said that the 'sacrifice of millions of lives' would be worth it for a Communist utopia.

An even more shocking example was Christopher Hill, who ended his career as the Master of my old Oxford college, Balliol. A brilliant historian of the English Civil War, he denied there had been a famine in Ukraine in the Thirties and defended Stalin's Terror as 'non-violent'.

Later, it transpired Hill had been recruited by the NKVD, the forerunners of the KGB, while visiting the Soviet Union in the Thirties. Working in the Foreign Office during the Forties, he regularly passed secrets to his handlers; one expert even calls him 'one of the best placed Communist moles in Britain'. He never paid for his betrayal — ending his academic career as one of the most respected intellectuals in the land.

As a historian, Sandbrook doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Hobsbawm or Hill.

[Corbyn's] defenders say that those were different times, that he was naïve, not wicked. I don't buy it. This was 1986, not 1926. People knew what life behind the Iron Curtain was like.

Yet the record shows beyond doubt that, at a time when Eastern European dissidents were still being persecuted, imprisoned and tortured, Mr Corbyn was happy to strike up a relationship with one of the regime's secret policemen.

The record also shows he has changed his views very little. As his enthusiasm for regimes such as Russia, Venezuela and Iran suggests, Mr Corbyn has never wavered in his admiration for dictators, his hatred of many Western values and his contempt for our national security.

I believe that Mr Corbyn is not merely unfit to serve as Labour's leader, he is not even fit to serve as a Labour MP.

One more thing. We now know of his links with the Czech secret police. But what about the East Germans? What about the Bulgarians, the Hungarians and the Poles? And what about the Russians? What have they got on him? Wouldn't you just love to know?

[cycloon]

Ahhh, the old lefties loved the commies bit. Really not telling the full history there, ey?

[Safe_Timber_Man]

It is odd that we're now in a time where it's actually the Right (of Far Right, at least) who are aligning themselves with a totalitarian Russian regime.

[The Weeping Angel]

It is odd that we're now in a time where it's actually the Right (of Far Right, at least) who are aligning themselves with a totalitarian Russian regime.

Along with elements of the far left.

[Safe_Timber_Man]

Monday:

Tuesday:

How depressing (yet utterly predictable) that Gary Lineker has become Russia’s latest ‘useful idiot’, writes DOMINIC SANDBROOK
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... idiot.html

[youngian]

Is Sandbrook a proper historian? If so he doesn't do his reputation much good. The Sun had some right-wing hack historian (Professor Vincent?) in the 80s as the view from the boffin. It was a phoned-in column (Bomb the Argies, Get on your bike lazy Northerners etc.) that didn't go down well with his history students and ended up delivering lectures to empty halls.

[cycloon]

Cue comments 'but Putin is alright, it's the MSM and Killary and the EU that are the real enemies, p.s. what's wrong with ostracising gays???? Identity politics SMH'

[mr angry manchester]

I cant stand Sandbrook at all. He's a smug, condescending git who thinks he's always right. He did a couple of series on, I think, BBC2 a while ago which I caught bits of, and didn't like.

[MisterMuncher]

Is Sandbrook a proper historian? If so he doesn't do his reputation much good. The Sun had some right-wing hack historian (Professor Vincent?) in the 80s as the view from the boffin. It was a phoned-in column (Bomb the Argies, Get on your bike lazy Northerners etc.) that didn't go down well with his history students and ended up delivering lectures to empty halls.

Short answer: No.

Long answer. His employer insists that the study of history largely, if not wholly, is about rote memorisation and acceptance of standard narratives. They also tend heavily towards denialism/revisionism of that which makes them feel uncomfortable. He writes for an audience that won't accept anything that doesn't fit their worldview, and openly panders to them.

I would say "Daily Mail Historian" is somewhat akin to "Amish Electronic Engineer" in terms of usefulness and validity