Category Archives: History

Western Self-Hatred and the Iranian Revolution

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 1 November 2022

The late Bernard Lewis recorded in his memoir, Notes on a Century: Reflections of A Middle East Historian (2012), meeting the Shah of Iran “a year before” the Islamic Revolution that felled him, thus, some time in early 1978:

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The Shah’s Perspective on the Islamic Revolution That Toppled Him

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 October 2022

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“Socialism With A Human Face” Was Always Impossible

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 21 August 2022

It was on this day in 1968, fifty-four years ago, that the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, one of its colonies in the “Warsaw Pact”, which had embarked on a program of liberalising reforms. The Czech leadership did not intend to depart from the socialist path, merely to soften its edges—and ran into the brute fact that this was not possible. Continue reading

Reviewing the Mystery of Jihadi Ideologue Abdullah Azzam’s Assassination Three Decades Later

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 11 August 2022

Abdullah Azzam [image source]

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Britain Won the Spy War with the Irish Republican Army

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 July 2022

An IRA parade in Belfast || Image source

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Bloody Sunday and the Irish Republican Army

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 June 2022

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Intelligence and the English Civil Wars

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 January 2022

Review of ‘The King’s Spy’ (2021), by Mark Turnbull

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The Trial of an English King

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 27 January 2022

“Judgement of Charles I,” by Ladislaus Bakalowicz, 1650

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The Bolshevik Assassination Campaign Against the Russian Royal Family

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 15 January 2022

The Russian Imperial Family: Olga, Maria, Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Anastasia, Tsesarevich Alexei, and Tatiana. Taken in Crimea, 1913.

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The Last Tsar and the Duty of Monarchy

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 December 2021

Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich in exile in France, February 1929

Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (1866-1933), the brother-in-law of Tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894-1917), gives an interesting anecdote in the second volume of his memoirs, Always a Grand Duke, published in the year he died, 1933, showing how the last Russian Emperor conceived of the duties of his office. Continue reading