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Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
44.4K posts
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Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
@NicholasOShaug1
Quondam Fellow, Hughes Hall Cambridge. Professor Emeritus, Queen Mary University of London.
London
Joined September 2022
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  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Nov 8, 2025
    Malta latter tried to join UK as a county; our lack of romantic imagination meant the request was not honoured.
    user avatar
    Dr. M.F. Khan
    @Dr_TheHistories
    Nov 8, 2025
    In 1942, King George VI of England awarded the entire country of Malta 🇲🇹 the George Cross, which still appears on Malta’s flag today. During WWII, Malta, a British colony, was relentlessly bombed by Axis forces because of its strategic location in the Mediterranean. Despite
    170K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Jun 7, 2025
    There was however a catch; the Harrovian on the far left died in India several years later and his friend was consigned to an asylum later in life. On the right, the boys became tradesmen and one became a successful businessman.
    user avatar
    Old England in Colour
    @englandincolour
    Jun 7, 2025
    Five boys who came to illustrate the class divide of pre-war Britain in 1937.
    59K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Aug 23, 2025
    Eg University of Cambridge has 6.000 administrators, many of them rather rude. But then this is an English trait- MoD has 63,000 administrators, army has 73,000 troops. Nation building its own funeral pyre etc, asphyxiated by process.
    user avatar
    21group
    @21percentgroup
    Aug 23, 2025
    In today’s universities, academics exist mainly to prop up administration Research? Too costly Knowledge? Too messy Teaching? Classes crammed to bring in money Bureaucracy has replaced scholarship as the function of universities — fully endorsed by senior management
    54K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Oct 29, 2025
    Actually 78 British generals were killed in WW1
    user avatar
    Dr Peter Caddick-Adams #StandwithUkraine
    @militaryhistori
    Oct 29, 2025
    Set in the Great War, when C.S. Forester's novel, 'The General,' was published as a Penguin paperback (1956), the cover illustration portrayed the subject in a typical Tommy's helmet. The next edn (1962) had him in a more elitist cap, echoing the new 'lions led by donkeys'
    30K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Aug 20, 2025
    Ulsterisation has arrived and it is here to stay.
    user avatar
    Marcus Walker
    @WalkerMarcus
    Aug 20, 2025
    Interesting. The street next to me was festooned with Union Flags overnight.
    28K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Nov 6, 2025
    The East India Company had its own military academy at Addiscombe; in fact the EIC was a state-within-a-state. But its officers could not use their military rank in Britain as they were regarded as mercenaries.
    8.4K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Jul 20, 2025
    I defeated her for the Treasurer-ship of the Oxford Union in 1977 but went on to live an obscure life! I once refused her request for a dance and the memory of this faux pas makes me howl with pain.
    user avatar
    Marcus H 🇬🇧🔶
    @MarcusH_01
    Jul 19, 2025
    As much as I oppose the work she did as Home Secretary, she was dealt far far too bad a hand as PM to deserve the excessive hate she gets
    33K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Jun 15, 2025
    Republic v. Monarchy
    user avatar
    𝐬 🇬🇧⸆⸉
    @redelitist
    Jun 14, 2025
    um
    5.7K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Jun 10, 2025
    wtf I don't remember an ancient sailing ship in the Falklands war, but it was there.
    user avatar
    Ricky D Phillips - Military Historian
    @RDPHistory
    Jun 10, 2025
    June 10th 1982: As the NGS hammers areas around Stanley and the Argentines keep their heads down, SAS patrols sneak into Stanley and tamper with the Argentine fire control radars, switching components so the damage isn't obvious. They sneak back to the Lady Elizabeth undetected.
    7K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Feb 5, 2024
    Somaliland is an ex- British colony and was locally governed by traditional rulers, ie subsidiarity. Somalia on the other hand was Italian, eventually ruled by fascist officials who abolished indigenous power structures. Hence the vacuum?
    user avatar
    Sharmake
    @Maydhalaalis
    Feb 4, 2024
    Another must read article by @DavidPBMaddox 🔥 It quotes Lord @ZacGoldsmith who said “The day will come when #Somaliland is formally recognised, and when it is, a light will be switched on whose glow will be felt across the world”
    4.9K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Aug 10, 2025
    As distinct from Somalia which was run by Italian fascists, who destroyed the indigenous power structure as I have said before. There is also the pirate state of Puntland!
    user avatar
    James O'Keefe
    @RepKeefe
    Aug 10, 2025
    In a world hungry for new markets, one of the biggest success stories is unfolding, largely unnoticed, in the Horn of Africa. This is #Somaliland, a de facto nation that built a democracy from the ashes of war, and it's on the brink of an economic explosion. Thread 1/18 🧵
    4.3K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    Mar 19, 2023
    There is an infantility to British political debate. The concentration camps were factories of death: those who were not gassed were beaten, starved and worked to exhaustion. In Ravensbruck, of which my aunty was an alumnus, thousands of women were murdered: see Sarah Helm.
    user avatar
    Tony Dowson
    @TonyDowson5
    Mar 19, 2023
    Although they weren't exactly uncommon before, Lineker's tweet does seem to have unleashed a stream of inappropriate Holocaust comparisons.
    17K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    May 25, 2025
    Leasehold
    user avatar
    Massimo
    @Rainmaker1973
    May 25, 2025
    Thoughts?
    1.6K
  • user avatar
    Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
    @NicholasOShaug1
    May 18, 2025
    If we don't have minorities we must invent them.
    user avatar
    jsd
    @datagenproc
    May 17, 2025
    One of the wildest things in the history of France is the "Cagots": a minority with no other apparent distinguishing feature, who were persecuted for centuries until the early 1900s.
    1.8K