Francis Pike

Could Xi Jinping’s time be up?

15 July 2025 9:35 pm

Stories about Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, are blowing up on social media. He died in 2002, so why the…

How Britain came to dominate Formula 1

6 July 2025 3:43 pm

This weekend, Formula One returns to where it all started 75 years ago: Silverstone. But although the first F1 Grand…

In defence of exorcism

28 June 2025 9:00 am

British politics and ghosts are subjects that rarely meet. Sometimes an MP or parliamentary aide might report a sighting of…

Is Xi Jinping’s time up?

14 June 2025 9:00 am

Stories about Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, are blowing up on social media. He died in 2002, so why the…

Should starvation ever be used as a weapon of war?

25 May 2025 4:10 pm

Sorry to disappoint antisemites, but Operation Starvation is not an Israeli plan to murder millions of Palestinians; it was a…

How Pakistan’s most powerful man provoked India’s missile attack

10 May 2025 9:00 am

From a western perspective, memorising all 114 chapters of the Quran might seem an unusual qualification for a national leader.…

For most of the world, VE Day did not mean peace

8 May 2025 3:30 pm

While drinking, dancing and laughter were the order of the day in Britain on the VE Day, things were not…

Is nuclear war between India and Pakistan inevitable?

7 May 2025 6:45 pm

Yesterday evening Indian prime minister Narendra Modi authorised missile strikes on jihadi training camps located in Pakistan’s East Punjab and…

Was Nixon solely to blame for the fall of Saigon?

30 April 2025 8:36 pm

At 7.53 a.m. on Tuesday 30 April 1975, 50 years ago today, Sergeant Juan Valdez boarded a Sea Knight helicopter…

What is more worrying than war between India and Pakistan?

26 April 2025 4:30 pm

This week, jihadist gunmen killed 26 tourists. For some reason Islamist diehards, supported by their stooges in British universities, did…

Putin’s Russia is part of a global Orthodox revival

20 April 2025 4:29 pm

Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch, was found hanged in his Sunningdale home in March 2013. Born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents,…

The truth about ninjas

5 April 2025 9:00 am

One of my favourite scenes in Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino’s black comedy martial arts film, is the meeting of Beatrix…

The weapon that could end America’s global supremacy

29 March 2025 9:00 am

Two weeks ago, a bright light streaked through the night sky above Inner Mongolia. It was not an asteroid. The…

The crocodile casualties of the second world war

16 March 2025 5:00 pm

At the end of February, 1945 about 1,000 surviving Japanese soldiers based on Ramree Island off the coast of Arakan,…

Why Tulip Siddiq had to go

15 January 2025 3:46 am

In 1996, I flew to Dhaka to meet Sheikh Hasina, the newly elected prime minister of Bangladesh, to discuss her economic strategy. It was not a pleasant…

We should support Donald Trump’s attempt to buy Greenland

29 December 2024 8:32 pm

Over Christmas, president-elect Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social site that: ‘For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout…

How the Black Death helped bring prosperity to Europe

28 December 2024 5:30 pm

As the media alarms us about an approaching ‘quad-demic’ of diseases this winter (Covid-19, Flu, RSV, Norovirus) it is a…

South Korea has a long history of martial law

4 December 2024 6:16 pm

Yesterday afternoon South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol made the shock TV announcement that he was putting his country under…

Why the West must back Syria’s Bashar al-Assad

3 December 2024 2:34 am

I had a nasty shock when I switched on my TV on Sunday. It was clearly a propaganda film with…

Leyte Gulf is the greatest naval battle you’ve never heard of

24 October 2024 5:00 pm

When you think of great naval engagements, the Battle of Leyte Gulf does not immediately spring to mind, despite it…

India will never join China’s anti-western alliance

23 October 2024 12:40 am

On the 15 November Xi Jinping will mark the 12th anniversary of his becoming general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party…

Tesla is in trouble if Kamala Harris wins

16 October 2024 4:00 pm

In the third century BC the city of Rhodes, in celebration of the defeat of Demetrius I of Macedonia, built…

The long-forgotten history of the Chagos Islands

7 October 2024 4:30 pm

Now that Sir Keir Starmer has unilaterally decided to give up British ownership of the Chagos Islands, the last vestige…

Why Taiwan is pulling down statues of Chiang Kai-shek

5 May 2024 4:00 pm

While the West obsesses about whether or not China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, is going to invade Taiwan, the Taiwanese…

Narendra Modi is unbeatable

24 April 2024 4:00 pm

Voting in India’s national elections started last Friday. It will take six weeks to complete, which is less of a…