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4 August 2024. By Nigel for The Spectator. Sir Keir Starmer’s government looks ready to smile upon the British Museum’s apparent desire to by-pass the legal prohibition of the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens by negotiating a ‘long-term loan’ instead. Since Greece believes that the Marbles were stolen, that ‘loan’ is bound to…
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30 July 2024. Nigel for The Telegraph. All candidates to lead the Party must demonstrate that they understand the issues that are at stake – and are willing to tackle them The “era of the culture wars is over”, declared Lisa Nandy in her inaugural speech as the Labour government’s culture secretary on 8 July.…
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01 July 2024. By Nigel for The Centre for Independent Studies. The pacifist answer to the problem of war is straightforward. Any use of violent force by anybody in any circumstances is immoral and should cease. War is always worse than its alternatives; peace is always preferable. This is not a view to which I…
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13 June 2024. By Nigel for The Spectator. Three weeks ago, I received an SOS from a distressed citizen of Glasgow, urging me to protest against a recently installed display at the Kelvingrove Museum, ‘Glasgow – City of Empire’. Predictably, the exhibition falls over itself to clock every conceivable association between the city and slavery,…
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31 May 2024. Nigel for the Daily Mail. The heroics of HMS Black Joke, a Royal Navy clipper that waged a fearless five-year war to put an end to the slave trade, are worthy of a Hollywood action movie. She was once a slave ship herself, sailing under the Brazilian flag and known as the…
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28 May 2024. Philippa Macinnes, Museum Manager,Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum Dear Ms Macinnes, I am writing to register a protest against the travesty of history represented by the display in the Kelvingrove Museum entitled, “Glasgow—City of Empire”. I do not object to your museum’s communication of discreditable and lamentable truths about the history of…
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28 May 2024. Nigel for The Times. Scotland owes over £20 billion in reparations for slavery, claims the Cambridge don, Michael Banner. And if the Kelvingrove Museum is to be believed, the Scots should pay it. “Glasgow was one of the major port cities in Britain which benefited from the [slave] trade”, declares its display,…
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7 May 2024. Students and staff are united through their foolish misunderstanding of Israel’s founding It’s no surprise that the widely broadcast pro-Palestinian protests in the US should have inspired some Oxford students to pitch their tents outside the Pitt Rivers Museum, decrying Oxford University’s historic complicity in the British Empire’s “disastrous colonial legacies” in Palestine. …
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3 May 2024. Nigel in the Church Times. From the Revd Professor Nigel Biggar Sir, — I write to correct four misleading statements made by Dr Susan Durber and the Revd Dr Duncan Dormor (Letters, 26 April) First, Dr Durber finds my book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning “repugnant”, because I judge the wholesale damnation of…