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Winston Churchill created the special relationship. Could Donald Trump kill it?
From the Suez Crisis and Vietnam, to 21st-century political tensions, the alliance between Britain and the United States has been declared dead – or dying – many times
Few diplomatic partnerships have been declared to be on life support quite as often as the so-called ‘special relationship’ between the United Kingdom and the United States. The phrase refers to the theoretically unique presumption of shared understanding and cooperation that has existed between the two countries in the decades since the Second World War. But did the special relationship ever actually exist? And if it does, what exactly does it mean in the cold light of day? “This is a perennial subject of discussion,” says historian Sam Edwards, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “You could probably go back to the 1960s to find the first obituary of the special relationship – the first moment where commentators were asking the question: is the special relationship done and dusted, or can it survive?” Those debates have resurfaced repeatedly whenever London and Washington DC have had public differences over foreign policy or military strategy. It’s a question that has arisen once again in March 2026, as President Trump has instigated a new wave of military operations in the Middle East, albeit without Downing Street’s unconditional support. Winston Churchill coins the phrase The term ‘special relationship’ has been in the political vocabulary for 80 years, making an entrance in the early days of the Cold War. In March 1946, Winston Churchill travelled to Fulton, Missouri to deliver a speech formally titled Sinews of Peace. Churchill was no longer the UK’s prime minister at the time – he had lost the 1945 British general election – but he remained one of the most influential political figures of the era. The Second World War had ended less than a year earlier, but tensions between the Soviet Union and western powers were already hardening along ideological faultlines. Churchill used the speech to warn about Soviet expansion across eastern Europe, and what he saw as the impending threat of communism. As Sam Edwards explains, the speech is “famous for two evocative phrases: one is ‘iron curtain’, the other is ‘special relationship’.” The phrase “iron curtain” described the emerging division of Europe between communist east and democratic west. The “special relationship,” meanwhile, referred to the close partnership that Churchill believed should bind Great Britain and the United States together in the postwar world. Read more | Before the Nuremberg Trials, this was Winston Churchill’s shocking plan for Nazi war criminals Churchill imagined this alliance resting on shared language, political traditions and deep military cooperation. The two countries had fought closely together during the Second World War, sharing intelligence, coordinating military planning and collaborating on technological projects such as nuclear weapons research. In reality, however, the concept was always more complicated than the rhetoric suggested. What does the “special relationship” mean? “Ever since Churchill articulated it in 1946, there have been questions about what it looks like, what it involves, what examples there are of it in action,” Edwards says. At certain moments, the alliance has appeared exceptionally close, especially during joint military operations or intelligence cooperation, as with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. At other times, it’s seemed less certain. Indeed, the first major test arrived surprisingly quickly. In 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt, nationalised the Suez Canal, which had long been controlled by British and French interests. The canal was one of the most important shipping routes in the world, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and providing a crucial link between Europe and Asia. Britain and France responded by secretly coordinating a military intervention with Israel in an attempt to regain control of the waterway. The Cuban Missile Crisis: World on the Brink Member exclusive | In this HistoryExtra podcast series, we explore the roots of the Cold War standoff and meet the key players in the confrontation. We track the pivotal 13 days at its centre, and the Cold War alliances that saw diplomatic tensions escalate to breaking point Listen to all episodes now The United States strongly opposed the invasion. “In 1956, the Suez Crisis was a first big crisis in the US–UK relationship,” Edwards explains. Washington applied intense financial and diplomatic pressure on Britain to withdraw its forces. The administration of US president Dwight D Eisenhower feared that the invasion would destabilise the Middle East and push newly independent states toward the Soviet Union. “The Americans were quite forceful in demanding that the British army withdraw from the Suez Canal after the nationalisation of the canal zone,” he says. The crisis is often interpreted by historians as a symbol of Britain’s declining global power in the postwar era. “In the aftermath there were discussions: what does the special relationship look like now?” Edwards says. “Is it going to survive any longer?” It did. But the crisis made one thing clear. In this relationship, the United States had become the dominant partner. How Vietnam became another test Questions about the alliance resurfaced again in the 1960s during the Vietnam War. The United States, then led by President Lyndon B Johnson, sought international support for its expanding military intervention in southeast Asia. Britain’s Labour government, headed by Harold Wilson, came under pressure to demonstrate solidarity with military backing. “However, Harold Wilson persistently refused to send British troops to Southeast Asia,” says Edwards, “despite the fact that Lyndon B Johnson asked on various occasions.” The decision created yet further diplomatic tension between London and Washington. But, Edwards argues, part of the reason the relationship has survived repeated crises is that it operates on along two distinct axes. “One is a description of a functional relationship, especially between US and UK intelligence agencies and their militaries.” For example, the two countries are central members of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance, which also includes Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In this sense, the phrase refers to concrete cooperation: shared intelligence networks, joint military planning and close defence collaboration. The two countries coordinate on nuclear strategy, share classified information and frequently operate together in military coalitions. But there’s also a second dimension. “The other part is that it’s an idea, an image, a discursive construct,” Edwards says. Politicians often invoke the phrase symbolically to signal shared democratic values and cultural ties. This rhetorical layer can survive, even when foreign and military policy disagreements spill over into the public sphere. “The interesting thing about what we’re witnessing right now is the erosion of both of those [dimensions of the special relationship],” Edwards says. Recent debates about the use of British military assets by the American military have raised questions about the functional side of the alliance. At the same time, political rhetoric has begun to harden. President Trump appeared to criticise UK prime minister Keir Starmer in March 2026, saying: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.” “The irony within all of this is that the person driving what looks like the erosion of the special relationship is himself a contemporary of that relationship,” Edwards says of Trump. Churchill delivered his Fulton speech in March 1946. “Trump goes back to June 1946.” In other words, both the concept and one of its most recent critics were born in the same year. That’s not the only irony. Edwards also notes that the current US president is the first since Woodrow Wilson to have a British mother. Still, after eight decades, the special relationship has survived multiple crises – all of which seemed like they might bring it to an end. As to whether the current tensions will prove more serious, Edwards is uncertain. “Can it outlast this? We shall see. I think it will, in some form or shape, but I think it is going to look different in the years to come.” Matt Elton was speaking to Sam Edwards on the HistoryExtra podcast series History Behind the Headlines. Listen to the full conversation.
The relentless rise of the mafia: a grisly tale of extortion, execution and Don Corleone
The 20th century was a golden age for organised crime groups. Ryan Gingeras reveals how gangs from the Sicilian Mafia to Mexico’s cartels capitalised on political chaos, economic upheaval and mass migration to spread their tentacles around the world
In the early 1860s Sicily was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy. Soon after, visitors to the island discovered what they believed was a criminal fraternity at work in Palermo and its environs. That fraternity – the ‘Mafia’ – possessed secret rites and bylaws that governed its members. Chief among their rules was the vow of silence, omertà, when it came to their interactions with the police. Many assumed this ‘honoured society’ was born out of the prisons of Palermo, a place where hardened criminals mixed with members of secret revolutionary organisations. Before 1900, Mafiosi distinguished themselves by a clear pattern of criminal behaviour. Brigand gangs who robbed travellers on the roads were bound to the Mafia. Large landowners and government officials abetted the murders, thefts and acts of extortion mafiosi committed. Yet there were aspects of what Mafia was that remained difficult to pin down. Mafiosi, Palermo’s mayor told one public enquiry, could be “anyone who has self-respect and has a certain exaggerated pride, and the inclination to not be overwhelmed but to overwhelm others, the will to appear courageous, to be ready to fight, and so on”. For people in the 19th century, what made Sicily’s Mafia significant was the threat it posed to the government in Rome. Mafiosi appeared to rule the island from the shadows. The violence associated with them was used to intimidate citizens and to demonstrate its power to the Italian capital. In the global context, the Sicilian Mafia seemed to be a part of a pattern. Other secret organisations were challenging states and empires in the hopes of winning self-rule or overthrowing governments. By the start of the 20th century, commentators outside of Italy began characterising nationalist guerrillas, anarchists and other revolutionaries as ‘mafias’ in their own right. The first generations Colloquially speaking, the word ‘mafia’ is often used as shorthand for groups involved in organised crime. But not every gang enjoyed the distinction of being called a mafia. Genuine mafias possess gravitas and do not come and go. They possess a culture, history or pedigree that adds to their status. Their mythos overshadows the exploits or dangers of the common criminal. The term ‘mafia’ is quite old. Use of the word dates back centuries in Italy, even though its meaning and significance has evolved. For Sicilians, ‘mafia’ historically meant a kind of boldness. A mafioso specifically denoted someone who was domineering or who bragged of their strength or prowess. Scholars tend to agree that the Sicilian Mafia is one of four historic mafias that endure to this day. The other three –the Camorra, which emerged in Naples, China’s Triads and the Yakuza in Japan – have similarly rich backstories. In each case, the development of these groups or subcultures speaks to their cultural roots. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-1082329096webready-e3f9054-e1773654775259.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Two men in traditional Japanese formal dress walk at the front of a group, followed by several men in dark suits. They appear to be outdoors during a formal event" title="Members of the Yakuza, Japan’s notorious organised crime syndicate, attend a funeral in Kobe, 1981. From the mid-19th century, the group were integral to the radicalisation of Japanese politics (Image by Getty Images)" /> The precise story of how the Yakuza came into existence is a detail lost to time. The term itself originates from the phonetics of the word ya-ku-za, meaning 8-9-3, the worst hand to hold in a Japanese game of cards. This name alone confirms that gamblers were the first to acquire a connection to Yakuza culture, which dates back as far as the seventh century. Intimidating opponents Unlike Sicily’s Mafia, Yakuza culture spanned much of Japan. From the Middle Ages forward, Japan’s elite relied upon clan members to manage or mitigate crime within their midst. Violence was a key to Yakuza culture, as were intricate tattoos and rituals. Later, after the Meiji Restoration (1868) and the establishment of a modern state, political operatives sought Yakuza support in the hope of intimidating opponents. Yakuza became integral to the radicalisation of Japanese politics, a process that eventually led the nation into the Second World War. Read more | The first mafia? How an early medieval kingdom perfected the art of deadly diplomacy Neither crime, nor politics, gave birth to China’s Triads. Their history dates to the country’s tradition of secret mystical societies. A feature of this was the way fraternal organisations promoted folk religion and mutual aid for China’s rural underclass. With Manchu conquest in the 17th century, these organisations morphed into secret societies associated with opposition to the government. The establishment of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) led to the creation of a group calling itself the Three United Society, from which the term ‘triad’ was coined. The number of Triad-derived groups rose as Manchu rule grew increasingly more unpopular in the 19th century. To sustain themselves, many secret societies resorted to theft, extortion and the sex trade. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-1354467399webready-f00eeb0-e1773654880975.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Three individuals stand side by side before an ornate, possibly ceremonial backdrop. One wears a light suit, while the others wear traditional Chinese clothing. Each has a ribbon pinned to their chest." title="Shanghai gangsters in c1925. In the early 1900s, secret societies capitalised on a power vacuum to form de facto governments across much of China (Image by Getty Images)" /> Adding to the strength and mysticism of the Triads were rich customs and a hierarchical structure involving initiations. After the fall of the Qing in 1912, secret societies expanded their influence over much of China, in many cases forming de facto governments over the countryside. Europe’s fragmented political landscape did not produce such universalised criminal societies. To understand the growth of the Camorra, we need to begin with 18th-century freemasonry. This provided a critical model for the organisation of subversive groups. Political radicals embraced its cult of secrecy and hierarchy in building movements aimed at national liberation or revolution. In the port city of Naples, rather less idealistic figures also took inspiration as, within the main prison, inmates in the early 19th century began to mimic masonic traditions in crafting secret codes and rules. Outsiders called this budding culture the Camorra, a possible allusion to the chamarra, or jackets, they wore. Camorra culture gradually exited the prison, finding members among the impoverished of Naples. With the threat of nationalist revolution threatening the city’s establishment, political leaders in Naples relied on the Camorra as informants and enforcers. Similarly to the Mafia in Sicily, Camorristi monopolised and exploited the underworld of Naples as extortionists and smugglers. They formed alliances with business leaders, politicians and the police. They became part of the city’s elite. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-1450387208webready-88367a6-e1773654963308.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Four uniformed officers stand in a line in front of tall metal bars, behind which several people are confined, some gripping the bars and looking outward. The setting appears institutional, with tiled walls" title="Italian police guard men accused of being members of the Camorra, during a trial in Naples, 1985. This crime group was originally modelled on the secret codes and rules of 18th-century freemasonry (Image by Getty Images)" /> Coming to America Each of these cultures initially operated as provincial conspiracies. Yet in the late 19th century, an era of mass migration, this changed. Like the millions of other people leaving Asia and Europe, Triads, Camorristi, Yakuza and Mafiosi sailed abroad. Many settled in the United States where they fell into familiar patterns of behaviour. This was a phenomenon Americans recognised almost immediately. In the run-up to the new century, newspapers took a keen interest in what they believed were vast immigrant conspiracies. Urban areas appeared to develop new underworlds as the vice trade came under the control of Chinese fraternal lodges (often referred to as Tongs). Japanese gamblers formed violent gangs on the west coast. Italian extortionists, known as Black Hands, became the scourge of communities across the USA. Read more | How J Edgar Hoover secretly ruled America Tabloids feasted on these revelations and fanned anti-immigrant sentiment. An occasional offence could be forgiven but, as one Mississippi editor put it, “When foreign groups transport and carry on here their Tongs, mafias, vendettas, class enmities and hostilities, it is a disturbance of such alien… and bloody character that America is not obliged to endure it and should not.” Like activists in other parts of the western world, crusaders in US cities grew fearful of the effect gambling and prostitution had on society. Increased use of alcohol and narcotics similarly concerned advocates for women’s rights and child welfare. Dispensing these goods and services were ‘organised crimes’ in so far as each required an illicit chain of suppliers, dealers and consumers. With the west in the lead, lawmakers around the world agreed to take more stringent steps to combat vice at home. As the world’s biggest economy and a country left largely unscarred by both the First and Second World Wars, America assumed a leading role in this movement. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-515170982webready-e7ec811-e1773656015480.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white portrait shows a person wearing a light fedora, dark overcoat with a velvet collar, white shirt, and striped tie, facing slightly to the right against a plain background" title="Gangsters such as Al Capone cashed in on the prohibition of drugs and alcohol (Image by Getty Images)" /> Domestically, attempts to clamp down on the use of alcohol and narcotics catalysed huge changes within the American underworld. Early beneficiaries of the Prohibition era were individuals who shared connections to the Mafia and Camorra traditions. They created a system of ‘families’ that held sway over bootleg liquor and vice across swathes of the country. Newspapers and newsreels captured their ascendency, as did early talkies such as Scarface (1932). Al Capone embodied this moment in his dress, cant, swagger and flair for publicity. Newspapermen loved him. “His whole demeanour,” one journalist noted, “is that of an overgrown child.” Capone could easily persuade a know-nothing stranger that he was as “harmless as a big St Bernard dog”. If the modern mafioso has a father, it would be him. Dope goes global It was only in retrospect, however, that American authorities conceived of bootleggers as a part of a distinctly American mafia. This crucial turn occurred after the Second World War, when peace brought a dramatic surge in narcotics trafficking. Heroin streamed across both the Atlantic and Pacific into a newly prosperous USA, a trade led by both old and new syndicates. Triad-linked groups traded in heroin cultivated in Burma and processed in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Corsican syndicates, as well as Sicilian mafiosi, exported even larger amounts of dope from Turkey and Lebanon. This latter ‘French Connection’ drew the attention of Washington’s top narcotics official, Harry Anslinger. In the 1950s, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) had long lived in the shadow of J Edgar Hoover’s FBI. This fact roiled Anslinger so much that he went on the offensive. Amid a climate of growing paranoia, Anslinger’s FBN seized the national spotlight with a series of fantastic revelations. Through televised senatorial hearings, government witnesses testified to a criminal conspiracy extending in and beyond the USA. At its heart were the rites and tradition of Sicily’s Mafia. American crime families, in coordination with syndicates abroad, dominated the global narcotics industry. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/0112042-2webready-35fd87a-e1773655091113.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="In a courtroom, two men talk beside a wooden barrier; one wears dark sunglasses. Behind them, several uniformed officers sit in rows, with more people visible in the background" title="Sicilian Mafia boss Luciano Leggio talks with his lawyer during a trial of mafiosi in 1969. “What made Sicily’s Mafia significant was the threat it posed to the government in Rome,” writes Ryan Gingeras (Image by Topfoto)" /> In 1963, Anslinger’s star witness, Joseph Valachi, added explosive touches to proceedings. Valachi, a one-time New York gangster, confirmed the existence of a singular criminal culture. Members, he claimed, called it ‘cosa nostra’, our thing. Valachi’s story reverberated worldwide. America, it seemed, had its own mafia, one that led the world in a host of nefarious dealings. Meanwhile, older mafias abroad were experiencing their own renaissance. The rise of fascism and the outbreak of war in 1939 inflicted devastating losses upon the gangsters of Naples and Sicily. Similarly, Triads and Yakuza gangs suffered at the hands of invading armies and collapsed governments. Yet with the restoration of peace, a new generation took advantage of the emerging postwar environment. Read more | The A-Z of British gangs and gangsters They formed partnerships with local politicians charged with organising reconstruction efforts. Yakuza and mafiosi found common cause with rightwing political parties that feared the growing popularity of leftist movements. Above all, Italian, Chinese and Japanese gangsters realised unprecedented opportunities to profit from the narcotics trade. This changed the character of these older criminal fraternities. Mafiosi of an earlier time, as one Sicilian don saw them, were “dignified people, gentlemanly and inherently good”. Narcotics trafficking, and the riches that came with it, often warped and diminished the character of those involved. Super Mario The idea of a life of crime impacting on gang members themselves was popularised in the work of the Italian-American novelist Mario Puzo. By his own account, Puzo had no particular affinity for crime stories but, when he was looking for a subject with wide appeal, he remembered Valachi’s testimony and began researching mob history. Puzo’s novel The Godfather (1969) sold millions of copies. A then ailing Paramount Studios bought the rights and head of production Bob Evans took a chance in hiring a young Francis Ford Coppola to direct the cinematic version. The film, released in 1972, took the Academy Award for Best Picture and racked up millions at the box office. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/3B5WNKGwebready-c054e86-e1773655386592.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Two individuals stand outdoors with a red building and a green‑white‑red flag or banner blurred in the background. The person on the left, with short hair and glasses, wears a dark jacket over a sweater and collared shirt and stands with arms crossed. The person on the right, also wearing glasses, has longer hair and a full beard and wears a brown jacket over a striped shirt while looking slightly upward." title="Mario Puzo (left) and Francis Ford Coppola on the set of The Godfather Part II in 1973. Puzo was inspired to write his iconic crime novel by Joseph Valachi’s testimony (Image by Alamy)" /> At no point do characters in The Godfather utter the word ‘mafia’. Viewers and critics, however, understood the film offered a close dissection of the phenomenon. The movie fulfilled the audience’s expectations. “Consciously or not,” as one French critic said, “people are inclined to believe that the true princes who govern us are hidden masters, all-powerful [but] anonymous.” The Godfather and its 1974 sequel changed how gangsters talked and how they went about their work. Even before 1972, mafiosi in Sicily began to refer to their secret society as ‘La Cosa Nostra’. After The Godfather, they also began calling their betters ‘padrinos’, a term used in the film. Around the world, criminal groups started referring to their leaders as godfathers (or some translation of the word) and began to mimic the organisational structure from the film. Life imitated art. Coppola’s opus arrived in cinemas at a time when the international drug trade was growing rapidly. Heroin consumption began to peak in the US and started to rise in western Europe. Cocaine, previously a boutique drug, began to appear in greater amounts in US cities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-1423176387webready-9c7c07f-e1773655583523.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An outdoor wedding reception takes place under a green‑and‑white striped canopy. A long table is set with flowers and a tiered cake, where the bride, groom, and other guests sit. In the foreground, a man in a dark suit warmly greets a man in a military uniform holding his hat. Behind them, elegantly dressed guests—including a woman in a red polka‑dot dress and wide‑brimmed hat—watch the exchange with smiles. Trees and hanging decorations create a festive atmosphere" title="Vito’s son and successor, Michael (Al Pacino), is greeted by his brother Sonny, played by James Caan. Such was the impact of The Godfather that, in its wake, real-life gangsters mimicked the Corleones’ organisational structure, changing how they talked and operated (Image by Getty Images)" /> Newer criminal groups emerged too. Before the end of the 1970s, two cocaine trafficking coalitions took shape in the Colombian cities of Medellín and Cali. Parallel developments in Mexico also gave birth to a similar alliance of drug smugglers run from Guadalajara. Some in the press initially referred to these groups as mafias. Law enforcement officials instead took to calling them cartels due to their perceived similarity to the petroleum consortium, OPEC. It was the latter name that took hold. A key figure was Pablo Escobar of Medellín. Having dabbled in smuggling as a youth, his reputation for violence sealed his close ties to landowners and drug runners. He drew inspiration from The Godfather and mimicked the “slow manners and long silences” of Marlon Brando’s performance. Escobar, however, was far more brutal than the fictitious Vito Corleone. His cartel murdered thousands, including some 200 judges and 700 police officers. Escobar’s death at the hands of Colombian security forces in 1993 marked the end of the Medellín Cartel. The cocaine trade, however, lived on. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-108556393webready-0846542-e1773655693174.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A close‑up portrait of a person with curly dark hair, a mustache, and light skin, wearing a light shirt and beige jacket against a dark, blurred background" title="Pablo Escobar took inspiration from the fictitious Vito Corleone. Yet, writes Ryan Gingeras, “he was far more brutal” (Image by Getty Images)" /> Cases across the Pacific spoke to increased activity among the Yakuza and Triads. In the wake of The Godfather, exposés in western media took particular interest in how Japanese and Chinese gangsters compared to western crime syndicates. For many journalists, Asia’s ‘mafias’ appeared more malevolent and exotic. The secret rites of the Yakuza and Triads made their involvement in the drug trade seem more difficult to police. No enquiry into the world of the Japanese gangster failed to mention their intricate tattoos, the katana swords with which they often fought or the severing of their pinkies as acts of contrition. The press made much of the supposed Triad penalties of “death by 5,000 thunderbolts” and the “flowing of blood from the body’s five openings”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-90768133webready-e58bc1e-e1773655170247.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="“Seen from behind, a person displays an elaborate traditional Japanese tattoo covering their back and upper arms, featuring a warrior figure. They stand against a wooden panel, with decorative floral motifs framing the image" title="A heavily tattooed Japanese man in c1895. Body art and rituals have both been associated with Yakuza culture over its long history (Image by Getty Images)" /> Meanwhile, the sheer number of supposed mafias surged during the 1980s and 1990s. Increased cocaine production in Latin America touched off upheaval in Colombia and Mexico, leading to unprecedented waves of violence and, as governments pushed back, the fragmentation of existing cartels. As smuggling routes grew more complex, Jamaican and Nigerian groups grew in influence. Street gangs such as the Bloods and Crips metastasised across the USA, specialising in the retail trade in drugs. Unholy alliances The dissolution of the eastern bloc had even more dramatic consequences. The sudden liquidation of state-owned industries across the former Soviet Union forged a series of unholy alliances between presumptive oligarchs and gangs. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-627229258webready-33cb468-e1773655825345.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Two people in military uniform stand over a pile of leaves, burning a fire in the middle of the pile. Large clouds of smoke are billowing up from the fire" title="Soldiers burn coca leaves in 1989. A surge in heroin and cocaine consumption across the west fuelled the rise of South American cartels (Image by Getty Images)" /> Other syndicates comprising Chechens, Albanians, Kurds, Serbs and Turks came to cast a shadow over different parts of Europe. The emergence of these groups led political leaders across the world to see their collective security in a new light. As the new century dawned, the United Nations formally adopted a convention dedicated to combating transnational organised crime. To mark the occasion, signatories assembled for a ceremony in Corleone, the Italian birthplace of Puzo’s fictional Godfather. Throughout this period, ‘mafia’ became a byword for describing new groups emerging in the west. The ease with which commentators referred to Russian, Albanian, Nigerian or Turkish mafias obscured the fact that no single group anchored their creation. Popular culture helped cement the impression that mafias were a global phenomenon. Read more | The Victorians’ cocaine habit: why 19th-century Britain couldn't get enough of the 'miracle' drug During this process, the narrative around organised crime moved far beyond the four historic mafias. Indeed, you could plausibly argue that such terms as gangsters, organised crime and the mafia have become interchangeable. So does the term mafia still have a special meaning and power? Yes, in that it encompasses a world where gangsters don’t just operate in the criminal sphere, somehow separated from the rest of society, but influence politics, commerce, culture and even international affairs. Without mafias, history since the late 19th century would have been very different. Mafias may operate in the shadows, but shining light on them helps us to see the past more clearly. Ryan Gingeras is the author of Mafia: A Global History (Simon & Schuster, 2026) This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
Antony Beevor tells the story of Grigori Rasputin, the peasant healer who captivated Russia's last tsar and his consort, embroiling the Romanov dynasty in scandal and its own destruction
The life of Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian peasant healer who wielded influence over the family of Russia’s last tsar, has fascinated the world for more than a century. Historian Antony Beevor speaks to Danny Bird about the man behind the myth and rumour, charting Rasputin’s humble origins in Siberia, his hold over Nicholas II and Alexandra, and his dramatic assassination at the hands of the imperial couple’s own relatives.
16 remarkable moments in the history of the Oscars
When was the first Academy Awards? How many Oscars did Titanic win in 1998? Why did Will Smith slap Chris Rock? Here's everything you needed to know about the history of the most notable event in the film industry calendar...
The Academy Awards were first held in 1929, and each year the film industry awards gold-plated statuettes – commonly called Oscars – in a glittering and star-studded ceremony. Officially the Academy Award of Merit, everyone knows the golden knight holding a sword and standing on a reel of film as Oscar. Cedric Gibbons, art director at movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, gets the credit for designing the statuette but not for naming it. Read more | The best historical movies of all time There are three theories. Hollywood journalist Sidney Skolsky always maintained he thought it up as a less-grandiose antidote to the pretentiousness of the award ceremony. Meanwhile, actor Bette Davis claimed she once remarked the statuette’s backside resembled that of her husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson. The most likely winner, however, is Margaret Herrick, a librarian at the Academy, who said the knight (not just his rear) looked like her uncle Oscar. But how much do you really know about the history of the awards themselves, and the dramatic moments that have played out on the biggest night of the Hollywood calendar? The history of the Oscars: 16 key moments 1929: The first ceremony takes place Founded by Louis B Mayer, head of MGM studios, in 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was intended as a non-profit organisation with the goal of advancing the film industry. The first Academy Award ceremony took place two years later at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, on 16 May 1929. Tickets for the private dinner cost $5 and the presentation ceremony hosted by Douglas Fairbanks (actor and first president of the Academy) lasted just 15 minutes. The film industry was undergoing a dramatic change at the time, with the revolutionary introduction of new sound technology. Although hugely popular ‘talkies’ such as The Jazz Singer (1927) had been released before the first Academy Awards, they were not considered, because it was seen as unfair to compare them to silent movies. Read more | Stars, scandals and the end of silent films The first-ever Academy Award was bestowed upon Emil Jannings, for Best Actor for his leading roles in silent films The Way of All Flesh (1927) and The Last Command (1928). The first-ever Academy Award for Best Picture went to Wings, a 1927 silent movie that told the story of two pilots in love with the same woman. The film cost $2 million to produce, making it the most expensive movie of its time. Up until the release of The Artist in 2011, Wings was the only silent film to win Best Picture. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-2225661880-bbfceb9-e1773593014852.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large banquet hall filled with formally dressed guests seated at long tables during the 1929 Academy Awards dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel." title="Guests seated at the first Academy Awards banquet, held at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood, on 16 May 1929. The actual presentation ceremony lasted a mere 15 minutes (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1934: The wrong Frank gets up on stage Arguably one of the most awkward Academy Awards moments happened in 1934, when both Frank Lloyd and Frank Capra were nominated in the Best Director category. Caught up in the excitement of the ceremony, Frank Capra heard Will Rogers, who presented the award, exclaim “Come on up and get it, Frank!” He duly ran up to the stage to claim his award, only to find that it was in fact Frank Lloyd who had won. Capra called the journey back to his chair “the longest, saddest, most shattering walk in my life”, saying “I wished I could have crawled under the rug like a miserable worm. When I slumped in my chair I felt like one. All my friends at the table were crying”. However, Capra’s humiliation didn’t last long: he won the Best Director gong the following year for It Happened One Night (1934). 1938: An imposter nabs an Academy Award The Best Supporting Actress Award of 1938 went to Alice Brady for her role in In Old Chicago (1937). However, she was too ill to attend the ceremony. When her award was announced an unknown man took to the stage to collect it, apparently on her behalf. Before anyone realised something was wrong, the man had vanished. The mystery of the imposter’s identity – and what happened to Brady’s stolen statuette – was never solved. Statuettes vanished again in 2000, when crates containing 55 Oscars disappeared from a loading bay. Some 52 of the statuettes were recovered soon after, found by citizen Willie Fulgear, who was rummaging in a bin behind a food store in LA’s Koreatown. According to The New York Times he was looking for boxes to use for an upcoming house move. Astonished by his unexpected discovery, Fulgear told reporters: “I’ve got more Oscars than any of the movie stars”. Investigators believed that the culprits took the Oscars by accident, unaware of the crates’ contents. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-1247583035-7b2e403-e1773592915263.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A middle-aged man in a hat stands beside a large skip filled with discarded Oscars campaign leaflets and packaging in a Los Angeles car park." title="Willie Fulgear stands next to the dumpster where he uncovered 55 stolen Oscars statuettes in March 2000. A truck driver was later sentenced to six months in prison for the theft (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1939: George Bernard Shaw becomes the first person to win an Oscar and a Nobel Prize After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, Shaw received an Academy Award for adapting his 1913 stage play Pygmalion into a film script. He didn’t attend the ceremony, however, reportedly saying: “They might as well send some honour to George for being king of England.” 1940: Results are leaked ahead of the ceremony At the first Academy Awards in 1929, the winners had been announced to the public three months previously. However, the following year the Academy decided to create a sense of suspense and instead sent an advanced list of award winners to newspapers, embargoed for publication until 11pm on the night of the Oscars ceremony. Read more | Knights! Camera! Action! Hollywood's obsession with the medieval era This system remained in place for the next 10 years. However, in 1940 the Los Angeles Times broke the embargo and announced the winners in their evening edition, meaning that nominees could find out their fate before turning up at the ceremony. As a result of this fiasco, the following year (1941) the sealed envelope system was introduced and the results became a closely guarded secret. 1940: Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American Oscar winner McDaniel made history in 1940 by winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, for her role as ‘Mammy’ in the 1939 Civil War epic Gone With the Wind. However, in the year that McDaniel won, the Oscars ceremony was due to take place in a hotel that upheld a strict racial segregation policy. Film producer David O Selznick reportedly had to call in favours just to have McDaniel allowed into the building. Despite being the recipient of a major award, McDaniel had to sit at the back of the auditorium on a segregated table away from the rest of her co-stars. McDaniel was also banned from attending Gone With the Wind’s Atlanta premiere because of segregation laws. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-3248364-8f93e1c-e1773592849432.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara grips a curtain while Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel, tightens the laces of her corset in Gone with the Wind." title="Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) clutches a bedpost as Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) tightens her corset in Gone with the Wind (1939). McDaniel later became the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award for her role in the film (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1943–45: Oscar statuettes are made of painted plaster The Oscars statuette, which depicts a knight with a crusader’s sword standing on a reel of film, was designed by MGM’s chief art director Cedric Gibbons in 1929. In the early ceremonies the gongs were made from gold-plated solid bronze, which was later substituted for the pewter-like alloy Britannia metal. However, as the Second World War raged, metal shortages meant that the awards had to be made from alternative materials. Consequently, all awards handed out between 1943 and 1945 were made of painted plaster. When the war was over, all recipients of plaster awards were invited to exchange them for metal ones. 1945: The first Academy Award comes in handy during the Second World War Emil Jannings, winner of the first-ever Academy Award for his performances in silent films The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command (see 1929, above), was ruled out from the new Hollywood talkies because of his thick German accent. Jannings therefore returned to Germany, where he became associated with Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine, starring in several films promoting Nazism. When the Allies stormed Berlin in 1945, Jannings reportedly carried his Oscar statuette around with him to win over American GIs and to demonstrate his former allegiance to the US. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-3273720-0eb23a9-e1773588040173.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Emil Jannings in military uniform sits between two soldiers in a scene from the silent film The Last Command." title="Emil Jannings (centre) in The Last Command (1928), one of two films that earned him the first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1929. The German star later appeared in Nazi propaganda films and reportedly used his Oscar statuette to convince invading Allied troops of his pro-US sympathies (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1968: The ceremony is postponed In 1968 the Academy decided to push back the ceremony from 8 April to 10 April following the assassination of Martin Luther King, whose funeral was scheduled for 9 April. In 1981 the ceremony was postponed for 24 hours following an assassination attempt on US president Ronald Reagan, and the 2021 event was also delayed by two months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 1973: Marlon Brando’s Oscar is rejected by Sacheen Littlefeather Marlon Brando famously refused his Best Actor award for his performance in The Godfather (1972) in protest of Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans. He did not attend the ceremony, instead sending Native American activist and actress Sacheen Littlefeather to make a speech in his place. When Littlefeather explained Brando’s actions, the audience was clearly unsure how to react – some people cheered, others booed. A confused Roger Moore, who attempted to present the award, apparently took the statuette home with him after Sacheen Littlefeather refused to accept it. Listen now | Hollywood history: everything you wanted to know Brando was not the first person to have refused an Oscar: in 1936 Dudley Nichols rejected his Best Adapted Screenplay award for The Informer (1935) due to ongoing strike action by the Screen Writers Guild. Later, after receiving a Best Actor nomination for his titular role in Patton in 1971, George C Scott informed the Academy that if he won he intended to refuse the award. Everyone was therefore very surprised to hear him announced as the winner. Goldie Hawn, who presented the award, exclaimed “Oh my god!” when she read the result. Unsurprisingly, Scott did not attend the ceremony, which he reportedly dismissed as a “two-hour meat parade”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-515575596-c4b96e8-e1773587308777.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black-and-white photograph of Sacheen Littlefeather in a dress and feathered hairpiece speaking to presenters Roger Moore in a tuxedo and Liv Ullmann in an embroidered gown." title="Sacheen Littlefeather remonstrates with presenters Roger Moore and Liv Ullmann at the 45th Academy Awards. The actress and activist had declined the Best Actor award on behalf of Marlon Brando, who refused the accolade in protest at Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1974: Tatum O’Neal becomes the youngest-ever Oscar winner The 10-year-old received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Paper Moon (1973), in which she starred opposite her father, Ryan O’Neal. She accepted her award wearing a mini tuxedo and platform shoes. 1998: Titanic wins 11 Oscars With 14 nominations and 11 wins, the blockbuster epic Titanic (1997) dominated the Academy Awards in 1998. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, it tells the tragic story of the passenger ship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. Films with historical settings have long performed well at the Oscars, from 1931’s Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front, through to recent films such as Lincoln (2012), 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Oppenheimer (2024). Other notable historical films that have swept the boards include the 1959 Charlton Heston epic Ben-Hur (11 wins), 1996’s The English Patient (nine wins) and 1939 Civil War drama Gone With the Wind (eight wins). Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Dances with Wolves (1990), Schindler’s List (1993) and Shakespeare in Love (1998) each took home seven awards. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-153184430-f61cc2c-e1773586809929.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="James Cameron in a black tuxedo stands on the Oscars stage with arms raised triumphantly, mouth open in celebration, while holding an Oscar statuette." title="A triumphant James Cameron raises his Oscar aloft after winning the Best Director award for Titanic in 1998. The blockbuster won 10 other accolades that evening, including Best Picture (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 2002: Halle Berry wins Best Actress – and makes history In March 2002, Halle Berry won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the romantic drama Monster’s Ball. The film, in which Berry plays the widow of an executed death row prisoner, was critically acclaimed for its depiction of poverty and racism in the American South, with her emotionally charged performance earning most of the plaudits. But the moment carried wider historical significance, too: Berry became the first African-American woman to win the award. The importance of the achievement was not lost on the Ohio-born star, who tearfully dedicated the award to “every nameless, faceless woman of colour that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened”. But while Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win the Best Actress award in 2023, Berry remains the only African-American recipient. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-51093737-bfd9528-e1773586577271.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Halle Berry in a burgundy embroidered evening gown raises an Oscar statuette while smiling at the microphone, as a tuxedo-clad Russell Crowe applauds behind her on stage." title="Halle Berry accepts the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Monster's Ball, March 2002. Berry remains the only African-American recipient of the award. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 2010: Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win Best Director The 82nd Academy Awards saw Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker scooping six gongs, including Best Picture. But arguably the most significant accolade was that awarded to Kathryn Bigelow, who became the first woman to win the Best Director award. There have been two further female recipients since then: Chloé Zhao for Nomadland (2021) and Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog (2022). 2017: La La Land is accidentally named Best Picture instead of Moonlight At the 89th Academy Awards in 2017, romantic musical La La Land and coming-of-age drama Moonlight were in contention for the coveted Best Picture prize, with many commentators suggesting it was a two-horse race between the films. It seemed settled, then, when the ceremony reached its climax and veteran actors Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway – who were presenting the award – opened an envelope apparently revealing that La La Land had been triumphant. The film’s cast and crew, including lead actors Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, made their way on stage to deliver their acceptance speeches and begin the celebrations. Yet it transpired that Beatty had inadvertently been handed the envelope announcing Stone’s earlier Best Actress win, leaving Dunaway to read out the only film title visible on the card: La La Land. The actual Best Picture envelope – which revealed Moonlight as the true winner – was still in the hands of an accountant from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm that oversees the Oscars voting process. Once the blunder became apparent, La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz halted the proceedings and held up the correct card showing that Moonlight had indeed won Best Picture, prompting the film’s stars to come forward and accept the accolade instead. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-645759516-31a508a-e1773586283673.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Warren Beatty stands at a microphone on the Oscars stage holding an envelope, while presenters and winners gather around him amid confusion during the 2017 Best Picture announcement." title="Actor Warren Beatty (centre) tells the 90th Academy Awards how an envelope mix-up led to La La Land accidentally being announced as Best Picture winner instead of Moonlight. La La Land still won six prizes at the ceremony, however, including the Best Actress award for Emma Stone (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 2022: Will Smith slaps Chris Rock With the film industry returning to normal following the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 94th Academy Awards was always likely to be memorable – though not in the way most people expected. Before presenting the award for Best Documentary Feature, comedian Chris Rock made an unscripted joke about Jada Pinkett Smith, who had shaved her head after being diagnosed with the autoimmune condition alopecia areata. Incensed, Pinkett Smith’s husband, Will Smith, strode onto the stage and slapped Rock across the face, before returning to his seat and shouting, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f******g mouth”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-1239559037-bcc5989-e1773586126858.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Chris Rock recoils on the Oscars stage after being struck by Will Smith, who stands beside him in a black tuxedo during the 2022 ceremony." title="Will Smith (right) slaps comedian Chris Rock during the 94th Academy Awards in 2022. The actor and rapper was subsequently banned from all Oscars-related events for 10 years (Photo by Getty Images)" /> The bizarre spectacle prompted speculation that the incident had been staged, but the slap was genuine – and the situation grew more awkward when Smith later returned to accept the award for Best Actor for his role in King Richard. The rapper and former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star is currently serving a 10-year ban from attending Academy Awards events, due to expire in 2032. This article was first published by HistoryExtra in February 2016
"We shall never surrender": 14 quotes that have defined the past century
Words have the power to alter the course of history. They can harden the resolve of an entire nation or people, encapsulate the ideals of a movement, and evoke joy – or provoke anger – long after they have been said. Here, Dr Seán Lang explores 14 of the most influential quotes of the past 100 years
<img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/RooseveltGettyImages-464783507-622899f-e1773405930967.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Franklin D. Roosevelt sits at a desk in an official setting, with papers, a microphone, glasses, and an ashtray arranged in front of him, heavy curtains framing the background." title="President Franklin D Roosevelt prepares for his inaugural speech, 1933. The former New York governor had won the presidency based on his promised ‘New Deal’, which lasted until the Second World War (Image by Getty Images)" /> 1. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” Franklin D Roosevelt, 1933 The United States lay devastated by the Great Depression, an economic collapse without precedent that destroyed the country’s global image as a land of opportunity and reduced millions of Americans to poverty and destitution. The governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had run for and won the presidency on the promise of a massive recovery programme, dubbed the ‘New Deal’, but he knew he could do nothing unless the American people first regained their self-belief. In his inaugural address on 4 March 1933, Roosevelt reassured them that they had nothing to fear, except fear itself – “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” The New Deal lasted throughout the 1930s until World War II set the country back towards full employment. Through the programme of reforms, regulations and projects, Roosevelt understood the power of words. He explained policies simply and clearly to radio listeners in his ‘fireside chats’, reassuring Americans that they had what it would take to improve their own lives and that the government would help. Roosevelt was elected an unprecedented four times, but it was that first inaugural message that set the tone for his time in office and helped give back the US its self-belief. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/ChurchillGettyImages-2667802-081f3a8-e1773403673660.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A man in a suit and hat stands outside a brick building, holding a cane and raising his hand in a V‑for‑Victory gesture" title="Winston Churchill gives his famous ‘V for Victory’ hand signal outside 10 Downing Street. The prime minister made some of his most memorable speeches during the first few months of his premiership, when Britain came under threat of German invasion (Image by Getty Images)" /> 2. “We shall never surrender” Winston Churchill, 1940 By June 1940, it seemed that Hitler had won his war. He had conquered Poland; launched a devastating assault in Denmark and Norway; and attacked in the west, invading the Netherlands and Belgium, and storming through northern France to cut off the British army and much of the French. It was only a matter of time before France was forced to surrender and German troops entered triumphantly into Paris. To any impartial observer, it seemed obvious that Britain had no choice but to seek a peace settlement with Hitler. But Winston Churchill, Britain’s pugnacious and controversial new prime minister, decided to ignore those pressing him to do just that. In an electrifying speech to the House of Commons on 4 June 1940, later broadcast on the BBC, he declared that Britain would fight on and never surrender – that “we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be”. Churchill knew that Britain’s navy and air force would make a German invasion hazardous, though not impossible, and that the only chance of defeating Nazism was to keep going until the United States could join the war. His words defined the stubborn defiance and ‘Dunkirk spirit’, which saved not just Britain but the world from a Nazi victory. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Mao-ZedongGettyImages-515210286-5fc8355-e1773403801718.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Mao Zedong, wearing a military-style uniform and cap, stands on a balcony and claps while looking over a wide avenue filled with a dense crowd and banners." title="Mao Zedong, seen here in an undated photograph, first used the phrase ‘paper tiger’ during a 1946 interview. The term is now popularly used to describe threats that are less powerful than they might first appear (Image by Getty Images)" /> 3. “The atom bomb is a paper tiger” Mao Zedong, 1946 The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 redefined the world. Leaders had always been able to plunge their peoples into war, but now they could wipe out whole cities, even countries, with a single order. While the United States was the only one with nuclear capability at first, the Soviet Union was not far behind thanks to communist spies in the west passing nuclear secrets to Moscow. Read more | Reign of the red terror: Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution In an interview with American journalist Anna Louise Strong in 1946, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong, described the atom bomb as a “paper tiger”, something that looks more dangerous than it is. Mao meant that all governments depended on the support of the people, and they would never consent to using atomic weapons. The phrase was taken another way: no government would dare use such weapons for fear of provoking a response from the other side. This was the idea behind the doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ during the Cold War, as the power and number of nuclear weapons intensified. Even then, the world came perilously close to disaster on more than one occasion. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Mandy-RiceGettyImages-1365867502-dd9056f-e1773403905292.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A group of people gathers outside a stone building while several British police officers in traditional helmets stand among them, appearing to manage or escort individuals through the crowd." title="Mandy Rice-Davies (centre left) leaves the Central Criminal Court after testifying at the 1963 trial of her friend Stephen Ward. Questions about the model’s alleged affair with a Tory peer prompted a now-legendary response (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” Mandy Rice-Davies, 1963 This ordinary retort marked an unlikely watershed in British social history. Marilyn (better known as Mandy) Rice-Davies was a model and dancer working in London’s Soho, where she met Christine Keeler and her friend and protector, Stephen Ward. A successful osteopath, Ward was well-known in high society, hosting parties and introducing girls like Keeler and Rice-Davies to his well-connected friends, including the Secretary of State for War John Profumo and the Conservative peer Lord Astor. A public scandal ensued when the truth of Ward’s parties was revealed, especially with reports that Keeler had slept both with Profumo and a Russian naval attaché, Eugene Ivanov, which made the affair a diplomatic furore. Rice-Davies was a witness at Ward’s trial. It was widely held at the time that people in high society were trustworthy and honourable, incapable of the lewd behaviour associated with ‘lower’ classes. When it was put to Rice-Davies that Lord Astor denied her claim of an affair, the assumption was that his word was worth more than hers. Her cheeky response – “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” – suggested that the aristocracy were no more honourable than anyone else. The remark caused a sensation. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Cassius-ClayGettyImages-545316246-1db1a81-e1773404032921.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A boxer wearing a shiny robe with “CASSIUS CLAY” on the back stands in the ring with both gloved hands raised in triumph as spectators watch from the packed arena." title="Cassius Clay celebrates his win over Doug Jones at Madison Square Garden, March 1963. The boxer, who changed his name to Muhammad Ali the following year, frequently described himself as ‘the Greatest’ (Image by Getty Images)" /> 5. “I am the greatest” Cassius Clay, 1963 Muhammad Ali, who changed his name from Cassius Clay in 1964, was always much more than a boxer: he was a role model for young black people around the world and a major international celebrity, mixing his sporting triumphs with irrepressible charm and wit. Boxing had long been a way for poor Americans to better themselves. Clay, who came from the segregated South, won the light heavyweight gold medal at the age of 18 at the 1960 Rome Olympics before turning professional and starting an immense career that saw him become world heavyweight champ three times. As well as a pugilist, though, Clay was a charismatic self-promoting poet always showing his gifts for trash talking. In 1963, shortly before announcing his conversion to Islam and his new name, he issued a record of rhythmically spoken poetry entitled I Am the Greatest. Ali continued to describe himself proudly as ‘the Greatest’, but he put his reputation and career on the line, and even risked jail, by refusing to serve in the US Army in 1967 as the war in Vietnam raged. His case went to the Supreme Court and Ali became a symbol of growing American opposition to the war, and a figurehead of the civil rights movement. He was now a champion of the dispossessed as well as ‘the Greatest’ in the boxing ring. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Martin-Luther-KingGettyImages-517357504-1305bdb-e1773404333188.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Martin Luther King Jr. stands at a podium filled with microphones, delivering a speech to a large crowd. People in the background wear uniforms, hats, and formal clothing." title="Martin Luther King Jr delivers his iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech during the March on Washington, 1963. The rally is considered a watershed moment in American history (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. “I have a dream” Dr Martin Luther King Jr, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr’s iconic speech was delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, an enormous statue of the US president who had ended slavery in the United States. By the 1960s, however, true emancipation was still far off as African Americans faced entrenched legal discrimination and police violence. King, who had made his name leading protests against racial segregation, was speaking to a huge civil rights rally calling for jobs and fair treatment for America’s black population, but his speech went much further than that. Read more | How did the US civil rights movement influence Britain? King’s style of oratory owed much to his background as a Baptist preacher and his imagery, of a dream in which black and white people lived in harmony and friendship – and where his children “will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character” – was in line with the visionary sermons that many of his listeners had heard in church. The power of his words went far beyond the 17 minutes that his speech took and the 250,000 people gathered on that day, 28 August 1963. They became not only a defining moment of the civil rights movement, but of US history. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Hannah-ArendtGettyImages-135314633-43360a4-e1773404990659.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A person in a dark buttoned shirt with a brooch and patterned trousers reclines against a plain wall, one hand resting beside them holding a cigarette, their gaze angled upward." title="Hannah Arendt poses for a portrait, 1949. The philosopher’s reflections on the atrocities of the Second World War – and the motives behind them – sparked fierce debate (Image by Getty Images)" /> 7. “The banality of evil” Hannah Arendt, 1963 In May 1960, Israel took the world by surprise when its secret service agents kidnapped and abducted a German living in Argentina who gave his name as Ricardo Klement. In fact, he was Adolf Eichmann, one of the key figures in the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’, the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. He was put on a plane to Israel and in 1961 he faced a criminal trial in Jerusalem. Hannah Arendt, a Jewish German-American writer and academic, asked the New Yorker if she could cover the trial for them. They agreed. In Arendt’s eyes, the bespectacled Eichmann, wearing a cheap suit instead of his Nazi uniform, seemed like any other middle-ranking office clerk; he could just as easily have been working for an insurance company or a bank. She coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to highlight the way evil can flourish not just by good people standing by, but by ordinary people in ordinary jobs carrying out instructions without ever questioning their morality. Her analysis ran into a storm of controversy. Jews were unhappy at her criticisms of what she saw as a show trial by the State of Israel; more recently, Holocaust scholars have pointed out that the viciously antisemitic Eichmann was very far from being a small cog in the machine: he was a proactive and energetic enforcer of the Final Solution, most notably directing the mass murder of the Jewish population of Hungary. However, Arendt’s idea that evil does not need supervillains, but merely enough ordinary people doing their ordinary jobs remains a powerful insight. She gave us the words to describe it. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/BeatlesGettyImages-84999643-9c296eb-e1773405091446.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Four men pose at a busy press event as photographers gather around them. Behind them are large globe‑shaped balloons and clusters of bright red, yellow, and blue balloons. One man holds a sign that reads “LOVE.”" title="The Beatles take part in a press call to promote the Our World television broadcast, in which they performed ‘All You Need is Love’ for the first time. The song’s simple refrain was designed to have international appeal (Image by Getty Images)" /> 8. “All you need is love” The Beatles, 1967 The Beatles were at the height of their fame and influence by the 1967 ‘summer of love’. Pop music had developed into a young people’s lifestyle and outlook that their parents, of the wartime generation, found utterly bewildering. The Beatles did not just produce hit records: they put forward a new philosophy, which overturned the older generation’s assumptions about behaviour, dress and morality. When their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band appeared in May, it quickly took on cult status. A month later, the group unveiled a new song, ‘All You Need is Love’, as part of the first global live television link-up called Our World, which was watched by an audience of approximately 400 million. The song had been purposely written with simple repeated lyrics to appeal to the international viewers, and so summarised the new attractive, easy-to-grasp philosophy in clear terms. As the song itself says, “It’s easy”. Older heads might point out that life needs a lot more than love, but in 1967 few young people were listening. Pop music has been one of the defining cultural influences that mark the postwar world: it has overcome generational, social, political and cultural barriers with its infectious rhythms and simple messages. While ‘All You Need is Love’ may have always been an ideal, it has endured. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Neil-ArmstrongGettyImages-1512723-8b06da7-e1773405173996.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A photograph of a ridged footprint in a grey clay-like floor" title="A close-up photograph of Neil Armstrong’s famous boot print, 1969. The astronaut’s first words after stepping onto the Moon became instantly iconic – despite a slight stumble in delivery (Image by Getty Images)" /> 9. “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” Neil Armstrong, 1969 That, at any rate, is what Neil Armstrong meant to say when he stepped down from the lunar module onto the surface of the Moon on 20 July 1969. Either he slipped on his words, or they were obscured by a bleep in the transmission, because the version heard back on Earth did not have that crucial “a”. It did not seem to matter. Armstrong was right: it was a giant leap, though at the time no one quite knew in what direction. Space exploration had excited people around the world since the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite in 1957 and putting a human being on the Moon had seemed the ultimate prize. Where was all this endeavour to go after that? Science fiction suggested a world of space voyages, but the reality was to be much closer to home. Space technology moved into the world of satellites, first for telecommunications and later for everything from television to meteorology and traffic management. Inevitably, the military potential of space was quickly recognised. The Moon missions opened space up as a further area of operation for the nations of the Earth, so Armstrong was right, even if he got his words wrong. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/ThatcherGettyImages-1215188595-b93ab08-e1773405339874.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A woman with wavy, permed hair sits at a microphone, wearing a black and white patterned suit and white shirt with V neck collar. She has large pearl earrings and sits against a blue background" title="Margaret Thatcher addresses a press conference at Conservative Party HQ in 1987 – the year her interview with Woman’s Own magazine sparked controversy (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. “There is no such thing as society” Margaret Thatcher, 1987 The Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman prime minister, ushered in a revolution. Her immediate aim was to resolve the economic problems into which the country had sunk in the 1970s, which she did by promoting a new philosophy based on free enterprise and the rolling-back of state control. In an interview for Woman’s Own magazine, Thatcher outlined her belief that, ultimately, it is not for the government to resolve people’s problems; individuals and families must look after themselves and their neighbours. In that sense, she said, “There is no such thing as society”. The phrase provoked a storm of controversy. Supporters applauded her emphasis on individuals, while opponents denounced what they saw as her uncaring attitude towards the Welfare State, which many regarded as the most significant change in 20th-century British society. The phrase encapsulated two completely different political philosophies: a belief in the power of the state as a force for good or as an enervating drain on the people’s energies. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/ReaganGettyImages-514906046-9ed3ad8-e1773405425624.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Ronald Reagan delivers a speech at a podium surrounded by microphones, seated officials behind him. A section of the Berlin Wall stands in the background with a German warning sign." title="Ronald Reagan makes his famous challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. The Berlin Wall was toppled two years later (Image by Getty Images)" /> 11. “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Ronald Reagan, 1987 The postwar Soviet Union seemed a menacing, repressive world, in the grip of its secret police and ruled by a set of grim-faced old men in coats, so the emergence in 1985 of Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party came as a pleasant surprise. Not only did he seem more human and approachable, but he was clearly open to a closer and warmer relationship with the west. Even Mrs Thatcher commented that she liked Mr Gorbachev: he was a man she could do business with. Gorbachev embarked on a wholesale reordering of Soviet life and institutions, beginning with perestroika (restructuring) and notably glasnost (openness), encouraging people to speak openly and honestly about their lives, their past and even their government. Western countries sat up and took notice. Was it changing into a western-style democracy? Were the days of tanks rolling into eastern European capitals to crush liberation movements truly over? Read more | Did Ronald Reagan 'Make America Great Again'? US president Ronald Reagan decided to test him. In 1987, the president gave a speech at the Berlin Wall, the most potent symbol of the Soviet Union’s hostile rejection of the west. He welcomed the changes Gorbachev was making, but called on him to take the most far-reaching step of all: “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” No one really believed he would, but it was thought that it might force Gorbachev onto the defensive. What no one predicted was that only two years later a mass movement of people, taking their cue from Gorbachev’s glasnost policy and calling openly for freedom of speech and movement, would force communist governments from power. When in May 1989 a journalist asked Gorbachev if the wall might come down, he replied, smilingly, “Why not?” By the end of the year, it had. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Hillary-ClintonGettyImages-526599660-40d8ade-e1773405542290.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Hilary Clinton, with shoulder length coiffed blonde hair, wearing a dark top and a pink, white and gold neck scarf. She stands in front of a microphone, and is turned towards the left, looking at someone out of frame" title="First Lady Hillary Clinton addresses a news conference in 1995. Her declaration that “women’s rights are human rights” helped bring the cause of gender equality into the global spotlight (Image by Getty Images)" /> 12. “Women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights” Hillary Rodham Clinton, 1995 The feminist movement had used a shorter version of this phrase since the 1980s, but it entered the mainstream when Hillary Clinton, wife of American president Bill Clinton, spoke at a United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The transformation of the position of women in society was one of the most striking changes to take place in the 20th century. In Britain and the US, the century had begun with the celebrated campaign for women to have the right to vote, and by the end feminism had developed as a movement and philosophy that sought to transform human society along the lines of equality. Clinton was an apt figure to give voice to the aim. She was a lawyer who, in 1974, had been part of the Watergate investigation team that brought down President Richard Nixon. But her husband’s own presidency meant that she had to perform what was essentially a ceremonial role. She could support Bill in his duties, but could she hold office herself? As long as women’s rights continued to be regarded as a category on their own, it seemed that women would never be accepted as equals – hence her impassioned iteration that women’s rights are not just rights for women: they have always been basic human rights. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stoneB8C7su-215cbe1-e1773405675845.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A young boy with dark hair and round glasses stands in a snowy street, dressed in a black robe with a yellow and maroon badge on his chest and a yellow and maroon striped scarf around his neck. On one arm he is holding a white owl" title="Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) with his trusty owl, Hedwig, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001). JK Rowling’s wizarding franchise rapidly became a global phenomenon – despite opposition from some Christian groups (Image by Warner Bros.)" /> 13. “You’re a wizard, Harry” Robbie Coltrane (as Rubeus Hagrid), 2001 When JK Rowling’s debut novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published in 1997, it was regarded as simply another imaginative children’s book from a first-time author. As word went round school playgrounds, however, the popularity of the series grew. Soon, crowds were gathering at bookshops to buy each new title as soon it appeared, along with Harry Potter audiobooks, videogames, tie-in toys and merchandise. Then in 2001, the first of a highly successful series of Harry Potter feature films made its way on to the big screen. What had begun as a series of children’s books had become a global phenomenon, with the words “You’re a wizard, Harry” (spoken by Hagrid actor Robbie Coltrane in the first film adaptation) becoming part of cinematic history. Hogwarts, Harry’s school of witchcraft and wizardry, is clearly a nostalgic throwback to the days of Britain’s famous private schools, with their uniforms, dormitories and special trains. But much of her message is more universal: a passionate defence of honesty and integrity against the dark forces of evil in the world, including those to be found in people who sit in authority. The formidable but kindly headmaster Albus Dumbledore is a sort of Old Testament prophet; the clash between Harry, whose parents gave their lives for him, and Voldemort (aka Tom Riddle), a boy who has given in to his dark side, is a modern stand-off between Jesus and Lucifer, the fallen angel. Did Harry Potter come to embody a substitute religion in the secular post-Christian western world? Certainly, fundamentalist Christians denounced the books and forbade their children from reading them. We can be sure that historians will be looking closely at the Harry Potter phenomenon for many years to come. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/For-EveryoneG5BD6F-9c59143-e1773405794351.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A packed stadium at night glows with blue and purple lighting. In the upper stands, illuminated seats spell out “THIS IS FOR EVERYONE,” while a central stage features a house‑shaped structure with projected visuals." title="Tim Berners-Lee’s cameo appearance at the 2012 Olympics ended with the words “This is for everyone” being beamed around the stadium. The words were intended to convey the democratic ideals behind the World Wide Web (Image by Alamy)" /> 14. “This is for everyone” Tim Berners-Lee, 2012 One of the most significant moments during the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics was also one of the quietest. After a stunning display that charted rural Britain’s transformation into an industrial powerhouse came a dance sequence depicting a 21st-century house party, complete with a full-size replica of a suburban home at its centre. Then, the house lifted up to reveal a middle-aged man sitting at his computer sending out a tweet: "This is for everyone.” The man was Tim Berners-Lee, and in 1989 he laid the foundations for what would become the World Wide Web. The web transformed the modern world just as totally as the Victorian industrialists had. Computers had always been huge, complex objects, the preserve of scientists and governments; until fairly recently, the most sophisticated item that people carried around with them was a pocket calculator. What Berners-Lee did was to create a way that would connect computers with each other, anywhere in the world, whether they were in people’s bedrooms or in the headquarters of international agencies. Suddenly, ordinary people had access to pretty much anything they might want to see. This was a democratic revolution as well as a technological one. As any government knows, access to information is power, and it was now in the hands of ordinary people everywhere. Tech companies grew from small gatherings of like-minded geeks into formidable multinational powers, able to face down governments. Of course, such power also brings responsibility, but Berners-Lee’s message at the Olympics was that the web should always be for everyone. A simple message – but a truly revolutionary one.
Lara Douds discusses the life, ideas and legacy of Vladimir Lenin – the revolutionary who reshaped the 20th century
Few people had as much impact on the course of the 20th century as Vladimir Lenin – from his years as an émigré across the capitals of western Europe, to his role in the October Revolution of 1917 and the inception of the world’s first self-described ‘socialist’ state. In this episode, historian Lara Douds speaks to Danny Bird about the revolutionary leader, from his radical theories and his elevation in some quarters to a saintlike figure, to his contested legacy in Putin’s Russia and around the world.
Why Britons rejected fascism in the 1930s
While dictators such as Hitler and Stalin were on the rise, interwar Britain chose a more moderate path – Alwyn Turner explains why
The 1920s and 30s were golden decades for extremism. Across Europe, dictators including Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini goose-stepped their way into power, but in Britain, it was a different story. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Alwyn Turner explains why – with a little help from the football pools, the Women's Institute and the Lambeth Walk – parliamentary democracy reigned supreme. If you'd like to hear more from Alwyn, you can listen to him discuss 1950s Britain on the HistoryExtra podcast. Go beyond the podcast.
The hidden history behind Mount Rushmore
What do four giant faces carved into a mountainside really tell us about the United States? Historian Matthew Davis unearths the deeper story behind Mount Rushmore – from Indigenous displacement to nationalist ambition
Mount Rushmore is one of the most iconic images in US history – but its story is far more complex and controversial than that of a simple sculpture. In this episode, historian Matthew Davis joins Elinor Evans to discuss his latest book, A Biography of a Mountain, which delves into the layers of myth and meaning behind the granite. Davis explains how the Black Hills – sacred to the Lakota Nation – were seized in violation of treaties, and how sculptor Gutzon Borglum, a man with ties to the Ku Klux Klan, came to carve the faces of four presidents on to a mountainside.
What inspired the darkness of Lord of the Flies? The disturbing history behind the novel
The first TV adaptation of William Golding’s haunting 1954 novel Lord of the Flies premiered on BBC One in February 2026. This disturbing and mesmeric four-part series of the modern classic challenges viewers to ponder human nature. Here, we look at the history of Golding’s dystopian masterpiece, and the real-life events that inspired him to write it
William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies in the shadow of the 1930s’ ideological polarisation, the Second World War and the Holocaust. These had convinced him that evil was not an aberration but was deeply ingrained in the human condition. He recognised that the Nazis had not simply imposed their murderous regime through sheer force alone, but that millions of everyday people had acquiesced or enthusiastically gone along with it. And though many in the postwar years assured themselves that they’d never have participated in its savagery, Golding was less sanguine. Read more | The myth of the innocent bystander: conformity and complicity in Nazi Germany “My book was to say: you think that the war is over and an evil thing destroyed. You are safe because you are naturally kind and decent,” he wrote while reflecting on the success of Lord of the Flies. “But I know why the thing rose in Germany. I know it could happen in any country.” As the most destructive conflict in history gave way to the Cold War and the mounting threat of nuclear annihilation, Golding’s bleak verdict seemed apposite. In later years, he maintained that “man produces evil as a bee produces honey.” Who was William Golding? Golding was born in 1911 in Newquay, Cornwall and raised in Marlborough, Wiltshire. He trained as a teacher, gaining first-hand insights into boys’ hierarchies and social rituals – knowledge that would later inform the tribalism in Lord of the Flies. Serving in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, he took part in the D-Day landings at Gold Beach in June 1944. The experience was formative, as he witnessed the machinery and the immense destructive capacity of modern warfare. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/WilliamGolding1983-2a64892-e1772205569790.jpg" width="1500" height="1500" alt="Black-and-white portrait of author William Golding in 1983, showing the Nobel laureate with a full white beard and wispy hair, wearing a collared jacket and patterned cravat, looking directly at the camera with a thoughtful expression." title="Lord of the Flies author William Golding pictured in 1983 – the same year that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature" /> This sense that civilisation had become eclipsed was widespread, and palpable in the titles of wartime novels such as Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1940). Everywhere, totalitarian dictators seemed to be ascendant and liberal democratic optimism in terminal decline. For Golding, the war had proved that ‘enlightened’ societies could descend into barbarism with terrifying speed. After 1945, he returned to teaching at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury, but dreamed of becoming a published novelist. At home, he and his wife Ann would read island adventure stories to their young children. One notable example was RM Ballantyne’s imperialist romance The Coral Island (1857), in which shipwrecked boys triumph through Christian virtue and British nous. How was Lord of the Flies written and published? One evening, Golding jested that it would be a good idea to write a story about how a group of children would really behave under such circumstances. Encouraged by Ann, he set about exploring this idea, writing obsessively in school exercise books and borrowing the names of Ballantyne’s characters Ralph and Jack. Gradually, one of modern literature’s most unsettling novels took shape. The novel became a deliberate inversion of the colonialist hubris that underpinned Victorian adventure stories such as The Coral Island. Where Ballantyne’s shipwrecked boys export British ‘values’ to a ‘savage’ island and emerge morally triumphant, Golding’s revert to an inherent primal savagery. Without adult supervision, the uninhabited island is a crucible in which supposedly ‘civilised’ British children succumb to superstition, destruction and terror. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/552262-fdc53fa-e1772208213343.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A scene from the 2026 BBC One adaptation of Lord of the Flies shows a group of boys, their faces smeared with dark paint, shout and raise sharpened wooden spears as rain pours down in a tropical setting with palm trees and tall grass." title="A scene from the new BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies shows the island's older boys – or 'big'uns' – wielding makeshift spears. As with Golding's original novel, the series shows the children resorting to increasing acts of violence. (Image by BBC/Eleven/J Redza)" /> Golding’s manuscript, originally titled Strangers from Within, was repeatedly turned down by London’s major publishers. By the time it had reached Faber & Faber it was already dog-eared and seemed set for yet another rejection, with one of the publisher’s readers scribbling on the accompanying cover letter: “Absurd & uninteresting fantasy about the explosion of an atom bomb on the colonies. A group of children who land in jungle country near New Guinea. Rubbish & dull. Pointless. Reject.” Fortunately, up-and-coming junior editor Charles Monteith recognised its power. However, he suggested drastic changes, cutting the original opening that detailed the boys’ evacuation amid a nuclear war. The result is the eerie beginning we know today: a ‘scar’ in the jungle, a crashed plane, and only hints of a global conflict. Read more | How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? Unimpressed with the novel’s working title, another Faber editor, Alan Pringle, proposed Lord of the Flies. In a letter dated 25 February 1954, Monteith shared this suggestion with Golding, writing: “It comes, of course, from one of the most important and memorable episodes in the book and we all think it’s the sort of title which would make an impression and would help the book’s sales”. Taking its name from the demonic Philistine deity Beelzebub – whose name translates from Biblical Hebrew as ‘Lord of the Flies’ – the episode in the book to which Monteith refers sees a festering sow’s head impaled on a spike by the boys as an offering to the ‘beast’ they believe is stalking them on the island. Lord of the Flies was finally published by Faber & Faber in September 1954, to good reviews and modest sales. Has it been adapted before? There have been several film versions of Lord of the Flies, each reflecting the particular anxieties of its time, though the core themes in Golding’s original work have remained consistent. The first adaptation, directed by Peter Brook, was released in 1963 – the year after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Its stark black-and-white realism resonated in a world living under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, when the future of civilisation seemed terrifyingly precarious. In 1975, a Filipino adaptation, Alkitrang Dugo (‘Asphalt Blood’), was released – tellingly, during the authoritarian rule of Ferdinand Marcos. That president, elected in 1965, declared martial law in 1972, alleging communist insurgency. The long-term dictatorship that followed was marred by censorship, the imprisonment of political opponents and widespread human rights abuses – a suitably dark context for the genesis of this adaptation. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-1692666755-08352a2-e1772207150208.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Black-and-white photograph of a vast protest in 1970s Manila, with thousands of demonstrators crowding a city street near the Philippine Savings Bank building. Protesters hold banners and placards calling for democracy and opposing President Marcos, while a statue in the foreground overlooks the densely packed scene." title="Protesting Governmental Activities In Manila" /> In 1990, the story was reimagined with teenage American military cadets; this version was released just as the bipolar world order of the Cold War was coming to an end. Now, in 2026, the first adaptation for television brings the novel to a new generation in an age marked by renewed polarisation, populism and geopolitical tensions, and when questions about social media’s impact on young people are seldom out of the news. What is the novel’s legacy? Golding went on to a distinguished literary career, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983 and a knighthood in 1988. He died in 1993, by which point Lord of the Flies had become a staple of classrooms worldwide. It remains a bestseller, and has been translated into numerous languages and adapted repeatedly for stage and screen. The novel contends that civilisation is not a permanent achievement but a fragile arrangement, always vulnerable to fear and ambition. Read more | Why the modern age was born of bloodshed Perhaps its most poignant moment comes when, Jack’s tribe having set most of the island ablaze in their delirious hunt for Ralph, their bloodlust evaporates the second they come face-to-face with an adult in the shape of a Royal Naval officer. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/552289Ralph-d5f6732-e1772207350653.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Ralph, played by Winston Sawyers in the BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies, stands shirtless among trees, his face and torso smeared with dirt and marked with scratches, looking off to one side with a tense, uncertain expression." title="Ralph (played by Winston Sawyers) in the new BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies. The character, who is elected 'chief' at the start of Golding's novel, finds himself being hunted by the other boys as the story reaches its climax" /> Yet even at this moment of deliverance, Golding ends his novel on an ambiguous note. The officer, a man of war, gazes back towards his anchored cruiser – a moment that speaks to the ongoing conflict being waged away from the island by the ‘grown-ups’ whom the boys had so earnestly sought to emulate in their initial bid to maintain social harmony. In 1965, six boys from Tonga who stole a fishing boat were shipwrecked on the uninhabited island of ‘Ata, where they survived for 15 months through cooperation, prayer and shared labour until being rescued. Their solidarity is often seen as a real-life rebuttal to the pessimism of Lord of the Flies.
I’ve just been to Europe’s weirdest theme park – and came face to face with Josef Stalin
There aren’t many theme parks that place statues of Soviet leaders next to Snow White and her seven dwarfs, but you’ll find one in southern Lithuania. Keith Lowe takes us on a tour of one of Europe’s most bizarre – and controversial – tourist attractions
I am standing in a clearing in a Lithuanian forest, surrounded by guard towers and electrified fences. To all intents and purposes, it looks like I’m in a Soviet prison camp. Up above me a loudspeaker barks out orders in Russian. I hurry along a corridor of barbed wire. Up ahead, peeping ominously through the trees, I can see the barrel of an anti-aircraft gun. But all is not as it seems. It doesn’t take long to realise that the loudspeaker is playing some sort of recording on a loop. The guards in the towers are not real either, but poorly disguised mannequins in theatre costume. And who are they guarding? Beneath them, in the barbed wire enclosure, is a row of Communist statues and half a dozen grazing llamas. Further along there are emus, cockatoos, a depressed-looking brown bear, and some statues of mass murderers. As for the gun, when I reach it, I discover that the only thing it is guarding is a children’s playground. Rifles and roundabouts, cockatoos and cattle-trucks, Lenin and llamas: welcome to Grūtas Park, Europe’s weirdest open-air museum. Its combination of terror and kitsch is so controversial that it almost got shut down. I first came here in 2018 as part of my research for a study of Second World War monuments. But I felt compelled to return, because I still can’t quite believe that this place actually exists. A brutal past Grūtas Park has its roots in Lithuania’s very troubled history. Like several of its Baltic neighbours, Lithuania began the 20th century as part of Russia and only gained its independence in the chaotic aftermath of the First World War. Just over 20 years later, at the beginning of the Second World War, it was invaded by Soviet troops all over again. Then came the Nazis, followed once again by the Soviets three years later – and with each new invasion came new brutality. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/42Y7B3TJ-ac517fe-e1772189389657.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white historical photograph of several military trucks driving down a city street lined with bare trees and tall buildings. The open‑back trucks are filled with uniformed soldiers wearing helmets, seated closely together as the convoy moves forward" title="Soviet troops enter the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, in June 1940. The country would be invaded by Nazi Germany a year later (Image by Alamy)" /> In 1945, the country was swallowed whole into the Soviet Union. Anyone who refused to accept the nation’s new Stalinist rulers was arrested, deported to Siberia, imprisoned or executed. Tens of thousands of Lithuanians resisted this new oppression. They took to the forests and fought pitched battles against the combined forces of the Red Army and the Soviet secret police but in the end the uprising was brutally crushed: according to the Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius, around 300,000 Lithuanians were sent to Soviet gulags between 1945 and 1950, where between a third and a half of them died. Read more | Why did the Soviet Union adopt the hammer and sickle, and how did it become a symbol of communist revolution? The Soviets then embarked on a program of Russification throughout the country. Russian speakers began moving into Lithuanian territories in large numbers; their descendants still live there today. Lithuanian culture was thoroughly purged of its bourgeois influences, and replaced by Socialist literature, art and architecture. Statues of Soviet heroes began to spring up in every town square, along with victory monuments and memorials to the glory of the Red Army. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/5GettyImages-839288220-170ae8f-e1772189538619.jpg" width="1500" height="1001" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph of a neatly arranged camp made up of small, identical buildings with pitched roofs and white picket fences. The buildings sit in rows on either side of a straight central path that leads to a decorative entrance structure with patterned columns. A few people walk along the paths or stand near the buildings. The surrounding landscape is flat and open, with only a few distant structures visible beyond the camp." title="A Soviet gulag in the Komi Republic, in what is now northwest Russia. Around 300,000 Lithuanians were sent to such camps between 1945 and 1950 (Image by Getty Images)" /> Marx and mushrooms When the country finally regained its independence in 1990, almost all the monuments to Lenin and other Communist figures were torn down. Countless statues were decapitated, cut into pieces with blowtorches, or crushed into rubble. Some were even dynamited. In an attempt to save some of these sculptures for posterity, the new Lithuanian government decided to rescue some of them, with the vague idea that they might one day go on display in a museum somewhere. They invited institutions to bid for the right to display the statues, but unfortunately none of the nation’s museums was willing to take the project on without some kind of state funding. There was only one bid – from an entrepreneur named Viliumas Malinauskas – that did not ask for any government money at all. Malinauskas offered to pay all the transport, maintenance and restoration costs out of his own pocket. He was duly awarded the contract. This was where the controversy began. Because Malinauskas was not a historian, an art critic or a museum professional – or indeed anyone who had any background in this kind of work. In fact, he was a former wrestling champion who made his living as a mushroom farmer. He now has a multi-million-dollar business exporting his mushrooms all over the world. Some of his proposals for the sculpture park were quite bizarre. He wanted to build a special railway line, so that tourists from Vilnius could be brought here on cattle trucks, as if they were being deported to a Soviet-era gulag. He wanted to hire actors who would pretend to be soldiers, herding the tourists onto the trains. For the full gulag experience, Grūtas Park itself would be surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers, and the monuments would be displayed as if they were part of a Siberian prison camp. Unsurprisingly, critics began to call Malinauskas’s project a “Stalin theme park”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/6GettyImages-805141-514324c-e1772189666539.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A man in a blue suit and red patterned tie sits outdoors on a large stone bust of a bearded man. His hand rests on the top of the sculpture. Beside him is another stone bust of a different bearded figure. Both sculptures are set on the ground in a wooded area with tall evergreen trees in the background." title="Grūtas Park’s founder, Viliumas Malinauskas, poses for the camera in 2001. The former wrestler wanted to build a special railway line so that tourists could travel to the park as though they were being transported to a gulag (Image by Getty Images)" /> It did not take long for the complaints to come rolling in. Local politicians opposed the building of the park. National politicians opposed the building of the rail line. A petition was drawn up denouncing the whole idea of his sculpture park, which was signed by Catholic Church officials, national NGOs, prominent academics, art professors and over a million other people around the world. “This part of history is full of suffering,” said one member of parliament, Juozas Galdikas, in 2000. “It should not be used for show business.” Read more | Nazino was Stalin’s worst labour gulag. Its inmates knew it by another name: Cannibal Island Perhaps the strongest voice of opposition came from former victims of the regime. More than 30 groups of former partisans and political prisoners banded together to protest about the sculptures going on display. They accused Malinauskas of trying to profit from their misery and described the statues as “monsters from a horror film”. Some of them even went on hunger strike. “Imagine yourself as a resident in a small village,” said one former independence fighter named Leonas Kerosierius, “and someone came and attacked your village, killed your brother and raped your daughter. Would you allow your neighbour to build a park for these executioners and rapists, or make money off these crimes?” MPs pushed for a vote in parliament to take back the statues and keep them in State hands, and their resolution was accepted by a majority. But their victory was short-lived, because it was overturned by the Constitutional Court: Malinauskas had won the government contract fair and square, and Parliament had no right to take it away from him simply on a matter of taste. The most they could do was to create a government watchdog to oversee the construction of the sculpture park. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/2GettyImages-870579120-2d552aa-e1772189931245.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of 5 stone busts of men in a line. Behind them is a forest of tall fir trees" title="A small portion of the park’s historic busts. From left to right: Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Vincas Mickevičius (Lithuanian communist leader) and Joseph Stalin (Image by Getty Images)" /> The whole controversy quickly became international news. Not only did it feature in newspapers throughout the Baltic countries, but also in other parts of Europe. It even made the newspapers in America, parts of Asia and Australia. “Miss the Soviet Era? Come to Stalin World” ran the headline in The Sydney Morning Herald. Snow White and Stalin Grūtas Park officially opened to the public in 2001 and immediately proved a hit with visitors from all over Lithuania and beyond. Even before the official opening it had already seen around 100,000 visitors. Since then, it has added to its collection and become quite a well-established tourist destination. People still occasionally call this place ‘Stalin World’, but there is actually only one full-size statue of Stalin in the whole park. I found him just beyond the zoo, peeping out between the trees like some fairytale troll. (The comparison to a fairytale is not made randomly: in a nearby glade, closer to the children’s playground, there is also a set of sculptures representing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The difference between folk tale and reality is not always scrupulously delineated here.) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/7P1020624-Stalin-f9456c1-e1772190254160.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large statue of a man in a long military-style coat and cap, standing on a pedestal in a forest. Tree trunks in the foreground partially obscure the figure. The statue shows the man with a stern expression, one hand holding the lapel of his coat. Tall trees and undergrowth surround the statue, giving the scene a secluded, wooded setting." title="A statue of Stalin peers through the trees at Grūtas Park. The monument, which was removed from its original site in Vilnius 65 years ago, continues to be a source of controversy (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> It is easy to see why so many people became upset when the creation of this park was first announced. Many dissidents had spent their whole lives struggling against the Soviet system. In 1991 they had torn down these icons of Soviet power with great joy: it must have been deeply painful to see them so lovingly restored and put back on their pedestals, regardless of the setting. The resurrection of Stalin’s statue was perhaps the most painful thing of all. This man had been responsible for tens of millions of deaths across eastern Europe, and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians. He had not been on public display for decades. (This particular statue had been taken down by the Communists themselves, back in 1960.) And yet here he was, standing in a sunny glade, waiting for tourists to come and take selfies with him. Read more | Cold War summits: how USA & USSR leaders worked to end the conflict Critics pointed to a worrying trend in contemporary Russia for the rehabilitation of Stalin’s memory, with brand new memorials to him being raised in many parts of Russia, particularly since the start of the current war with Ukraine. What if this trend were to spread to Lithuania and beyond? What if Grūtas Park, too, were to become a 21st-century shrine to this monstrous dictator? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/P1020458-Snow-White-7-dwarves-ad174d4-e1772190445583.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A group of dark wooden sculptures is arranged among tall pine trees in a sunlit forest. Most of the carved figures are seated or kneeling, some with helmets or rounded headgear, while one taller figure stands upright at the center. The sculptures are spaced evenly across the forest floor. In the background, there are a few simple buildings with wooden or metal siding, one marked with graffiti. Sunlight filters through the trees, casting long shadows across the ground." title="Sculptures depicting Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs can be found close to the park’s full-size Stalin statue. “The difference between folk tale and reality is not always scrupulously delineated here,” says Keith Lowe (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> The power of ridicule Had this statue, and all the others, been given to one of the other bidders for the monument park contract, perhaps there would have been less controversy. Europos Parkas, in Vilnius, wanted to exhibit the statues purely as works of art, alongside a whole variety of avant-garde creations by artists from all over the world. Here, perhaps, the aesthetic qualities of a Stalin statue might have been divorced from its political meaning. The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius also applied for the contract. It would have displayed the monuments in its main hall and courtyard. Had Stalin’s statue been placed here, it would have been seen alongside an extensive exhibition dedicated to his crimes. Many of those who protested against Grūtas Park wanted the museum to have won the bid precisely because it would have put the benign looking statues of figures like Stalin in a much, much grimmer context. But there is something about the way that Grūtas Park displays its statues that is enormously refreshing. Seeing Stalin with a squirrel on his head takes away some of the nightmarish power he continues to exercise over us from beyond the grave. When birds are nesting in Lenin’s fingers, and children are climbing over the guns that were once aimed at Lithuanian partisans, these symbols of state power no longer seem as frightening as they once did. This seems to be exactly what Viliumas Malinauskas is trying to achieve. In an interview with the Guardian shortly before the park opened, the proprietor was unapologetic about his peculiar approach to Lithuania’s troubled history. “People can come here and joke about the sculptures,” he said. “And that will mean Lithuania is no longer afraid of Communism.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/9P1020459-2-Playground-with-military-van-2d8059e-e1772190762404.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colorful playground structure sits in a sandy, wooded clearing. It includes a red‑and‑green climbing frame, a curved yellow slide, and a green cylindrical tunnel element. Tall pine trees surround the area, casting dappled light on the ground. In the background, partly hidden by trees and bushes, an old green vehicle—possibly a van or small truck—rests near the edge of the clearing." title="A children’s climbing frame is sited metres away from a disused military vehicle. Does such a juxtaposition make Lithuania’s troubled past seem less frightening? (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> Grūtas Park is a bizarre mix of playground, zoo and atrocity museum. It trivialises the past in the most appalling ways, especially with its Disneyfied guard towers and barbed wire. Some of the museum displays in its barrack-style huts are more nostalgic than critical of the regime. And its commercial exploitation of Lithuania’s painful past is questionable to say the least: I managed to buy myself a Stalin mug and a Stalin keyring in the gift shop on my way out. In fact, there are so many things about Grūtas Park that could be considered offensive that I hardly know where to start; and yet somehow, through its sheer banality, it comes closer to freeing Lithuania from its history than any of the more serious and thoughtful monuments that have been so carefully produced in other parts of Europe. The magic ingredient is ridicule. I’m not sure how much this ridicule was ever intended by the park’s founder and owner, and how much is just a function of a ridiculous set-up. Nevertheless, it is there, and it is a powerful antidote to the atmosphere of fear that plagued this country for so many years. Keith Lowe is an author and former military history publisher who has spent more than 20 years writing about the Second World War and its aftermath. His most recent book is Naples 1944: War, Liberation and Chaos (William Collins, 2024)