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Historikern Andrew Roberts, som jag tidigare gjort mig lite lustig över, tycks vara allt annat än en lustig figur - enligt The New Republic.

In 2001, Roberts spoke to a dinner of the Springbok Club, a group that regards itself as a shadow white government of South Africa and calls for "the re-establishment of civilized European rule throughout the African continent." Founded by a former member of the neo-fascist National Front, the club flies the flag of apartheid South Africa at every meeting... Surrounded by nostalgists for this racist rule, Roberts, according to the club's website, "finished his speech by proposing a toast to the Springbok Club, which he said he considered the heir to previous imperial achievements."

Det riktigt läskiga är att karln tydligen vunnit president Bushs öra, även om hans historiska slutsatser är minst sagt öh... svårstödda.

For example, he has advised Bush to adopt "the whole idea of mass internment," saying: "I think it is the way the administration of Iraq should go." At his lunch with Bush, according to economist Irwin Stelzer, who was present, Roberts cited Ireland as a place where internment worked.

Every major historian of Ireland--across the political spectrum--says the opposite is the case. When internment was introduced in Northern Ireland in 1971, violence vastly increased--and it only fell when it was abolished. The decision by the British to grab Catholics on the flimsiest evidence and hold them without trial is universally regarded as the greatest recruiting gift the Irish Republican Army was ever handed. "Roberts has no track record as a historian of Ireland," says Brendan O'Leary of the University of Pennsylvania, an expert on both Ireland and counterinsurgency techniques. "If he did, he would know that there is a total historical consensus that internment was a catastrophe."

Roberts senaste bok heter A History of the English Speaking Peoples. Köp den för fan inte.