Tim Worstall

Yes, indeed, the British Government did compensate slave owners when they abolished colonial slavery. Damn good thing they did too. For it was the thing which got slavery abolished. Without the compensation it’s extremely doubtful that it would have passed: and it certainly wouldn’t have passed when it did. The true scale of Britain’s involvement [...]

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Leave aside the green mummery at the end. A fascinating little discussion of the Chinese wheelbarrow. And pondering the difference between the European and the Chinese wheelbarrows. I agree absolutely that the Chinese style one would have been useful in Europe. But I have a feeling that the design differences are due to their being [...]

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Fossils of bacteria found in Australia are the oldest yet discovered anywhere on Earth and predate the formation of oxygen on our planet, new research claims. Given that oxygen in the atmosphere is a product of life then clearly, life existed before oxygen in the atmosphere.

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“Do you realise,” he exclaimed one day, “that from the time the Romans left Britain until the arrival of the American heiresses, this country was completely without central heating?”

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I’m not all that sure that I believe the whole tale but there we go. Victor Kislyi, who made a fortune from the online game World of Tanks, is funding the search for Second World War Spitfires believed to have been buried in Burma. But given Mr. Kislyi’s background perhaps someone would like to whisper [...]

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No, go on. A baby could neither be enslaved, nor marched to the gas chamber alone. And so her mother had to carry her to both their deaths.

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The leading voice in Britain denouncing the savage treatment of the Kenyan prisoners at the time was Enoch Powell, the supposed racist.

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Calling us all middle class solves nothing Hmm. And the example to be used? In Georgian times, Jane Austen’s family lived an impecunious life, on £210 a year, better off than 95% of the population but treated as “the middle ranks” – so richer than most but not as wealthy as the few. By simple [...]

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Farmers first reached Orkney on boats that took them across the narrow – but treacherously dangerous – Pentland Firth from mainland Scotland. These were the people of the New Stone Age, and they brought cattle, pigs and sheep with them, as well as grain to plant and ploughs to till the land. The few hunter-gatherers [...]

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The white palazzo-style building, which has 45 bedrooms, is being discreetly offered to a select group of wealthy international buyers. A reported price tag of £300 million would smash Britain’s existing house-price record of £140 million, which was achieved on a 300 year-old house in Henley-on-Thames last year. OK, vastly expensive palace in London. But [...]

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I’ve said this before and Fraser Nelson is saying it again. By just about any measure you care to use the good old days are right now. More people are living better, richer and longer lives than has ever been true at any previous point in history. What’s that if it’s not the good old [...]

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I’m reading a history of Ancient Egypt. And there are two bits that would help me get a grasp on what I’m reading, two bits that don’t seem to be in the book. One is the population, which I can find online. 1-5 million, dependent upon period. But the other is the size of the [...]

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Ho hum. Before this, such outbreaks would have remained localised, argues a provocative new book. But by then the “scramble for Africa” was under way and thousands of porters were crossing through the area. So it was, the authors claim, that colonisation by the European powers a century ago is responsible for unleashing HIV on [...]

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Private owners of capital used the state to force peasants – who, in the 14th century, worked about a quarter of hours that the average person does now – to work 12 hour days in factories. We’re supposed to believe that a peasant working in a subsistence economy works 10 hours a week are we? [...]

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Several years ago, a group of leaders from the Chinese church came to England on a holy pilgrimage. They had followed in the footsteps of one of Christianity’s great missionaries in the Far East, travelling for days to worship at the hallowed birthplace of their religious teacher. When they reached their destination, the church leaders [...]

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The spies were then given a choice of betraying their Nazi leaders or facing the firing squad. For hanging was the punishment at the time. A firing squad is, when used, a military punishment, not one for civilian spies even in time of war. Update: so, someone dares to contradict me in the comments, eh? [...]

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I believe you’ve got your history a little telescoped here. The fact that no remedy has seemed to work has had remarkably little impact on policy. During the Depression Milton Friedman’s call for an increase in money supply proved ineffective when that increase was merely hoarded by stricken banks. Thus pumping up the banks is [...]

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There have been periods in Britain’s history – the famine of the 1340s, followed by the Black Death – when there were colossal falls in living standards, No, the Black Death caused, for those who survived of course, a massiove rise in living standards. It was a Malthusian economy, see? Fewer people, same amount of [...]

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As Kentucky-based Sawyer, 58, points out: “I scarcely think Jesus could have overturned the tables of the money-lenders and driven them from the temple if he was a wimp. The model I use for my paintings is a surfer guy who’s built like a brick shithouse.” Historically, it would be very odd to think that [...]

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Nice set of pictures of the anti-Gorbachov coup 20 years ago. Bernard Levin, all those years ago, called it exactly, to the moment, when the Soviet system came tumbling down. At one point, the crowd defending the White House was called upon to disperse. Along the lines of “This is the KGB, we order you [...]

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