Richard Overy
Risky Business
I recently played the strategy board game Risk for the first time in many years. After the first desultory moves I informed my companions that from then on I was going to use Clausewitz as my guide, hoping they might be intimidated. I was the first to be knocked out. If there is one lesson from Lawrence Freedman’s encyclopedic study of strategy through the ages, it is to rely on your own cunning, intelligence and luck and to leave the textbooks behind.
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With just a few days to go until the first issue of the new decade, does anyone recognise the stern figure on our February cover?
'Fiona Shaw, in Jonathan Miller’s production, is the best shrew I have seen. She starts off in a mustard yellow dress with a mustard sharp tongue.'
From the archive, Kate Kellaway on a 1988 production of 'The Taming of the Shrew'.
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'He was not a revolutionary at all of course. He was only marginally a socialist. His tradition was rooted in the Liberal aristocracy, and his politics were entirely bounded by Parliament.'
From the archive, Paul Foot on Tony Benn's diaries.
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