Niall Ferguson is in high spirits when we meet at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, California, where he is a senior fellow.

In our Great Rewind, smoking is back and work is no place for women

The Hobbit author’s fans have mostly missed his conservative message

Neither populism nor centrism delivers, but save us from socialism

Nations are having to pick sides in the China-US standoff. Easy choice

Thanksgiving is a wonderful festivity. Unlike the great British Christmas, the American Thanksgiving has somehow eluded commercialisation.

A failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis.” You might think the former transport minister Jo Johnson’s parting shot at Theresa May stood a fair chance of attaining immortality in the A-level history exams of the future.

To my 19-year-old son, the First World War — which ended 100 years ago today — is as remote an event as the Congress of Berlin was to me when I was 19, Lloyd George as distant a figure as Disraeli.

Unlike presidential elections, it is usually quite easy to predict who will win the mid-terms.