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Bethany Hall

Napoleon’s Brush With ‘Black Spartacus’

Napoleon’s Brush With ‘Black Spartacus’

Napoleon Bonaparte and Toussaint Louverture, the great Haitian freedom fighter, were initially allies. Sudhir Hazareesingh, who has written a celebrated biography of Louverture, describes how the two men’s relationship subsequently soured.
Sudhir Hazareesingh

Napoleon’s Brush With ‘Black Spartacus’ The Haitian revolution was one of the defining episodes in modern global history. It began in 1791 with a mass uprising of the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue, France’s richest and most profitable colony. Drawing upon local...

FDR & Stalin: The Strategists

FDR & Stalin: The Strategists

A new book on the Second World War has re-appraised the allied leaders as strategists. Its author here examines President Franklin Roosevelt and Premier Josef Stalin.
Phillips Payson O’Brien

FDR & Stalin: The Strategists Stalin as the Worst Strategist Why I argue Stalin is both the Worst and Best war leader is because you need to start with the worst before you get to the best. Stalin, in opting to ally with Hitler in 1939 and sign the Nazi-Soviet...

How Far is Modern Russia a Prisoner of its Past?

How Far is Modern Russia a Prisoner of its Past?

The author of a new book on Russia’s military past provides the historical echoes that we’ve seen played out on the battlefields of Ukraine.
Mark Galeotti

Vladimir Putin clearly fancies himself something of a historian – even if, as a professional historian, I feel much of his ‘work’ would struggle to get a passing grade, laden as it is with factual inaccuracies and the careful cherry picking of evidence to fit his...

The Lopez Case

The Lopez Case

The thriller writer of the Tudor era delves into the mysterious case of Roderigo Lopez.

The case of Dr Roderigo Lopez, the only physician to English royalty ever to be executed for high treason, is not particularly well known, though Dominic Green’s The Double Life of Dr Lopez has done much to fill this gap in our knowledge. The case, however, provides a...

Wally Hammond

Wally Hammond

The author of a new book on the Victory series of 1945 profiles one of the greatest batsmen of all time.

Christopher Sandford

Wally Hammond In early April 1945, even while Hitler remained alive, directing phantom armies from his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery garden in Berlin, the English cricket authorities decided that it might be possible to stage a number of Test-level matches with...

Mayne the SAS & the VC That Never Was

Mayne the SAS & the VC That Never Was

Damien Lewis’ latest book delves into the actions of the SAS in France and Paddy Mayne’s bravery.

Mayne the SAS & the VC Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne and a core of stalwarts were unwilling to let the history of this proud unit die with its dissolution. Instead, they took the Chronik of Schneeren town, unscrewed the brass bolts that held its spine together, removed the...

Chasing Shadows

Chasing Shadows

The author of a new thriller describes the search for WMDs.
Will Erikson

Chasing Shadows In the summer of 2003, I was one of around 1,200 American, British, and Australian intelligence personnel sent to Baghdad to form the Iraq Survey Group (ISG). The task of this unprecedented field intelligence operation was simple: locate the Weapons of...

Pride’s Purge

Pride’s Purge

Pride's Purge laid in place the stepping stones that ended with the scaffold and the execution of Charles I.
Alice Hunt

Pride's Purge Early in the morning of 6 December 1648, soldiers began to gather around Whitehall. Some were on foot, some on horse. A pale light was beginning to show in the sky. It was cold, and the atmosphere was edgy. At the heart of the mass of buildings that...

The Other Norman Conquest

The Other Norman Conquest

The 'Norman Conquest' expands far beyond England throughout the 11th century.

In England, the phrase ‘Norman Conquest’ immediately conjures up images of arrows in the eye, the Bayeux tapestry and an abrupt transition from Anglo-Saxon rule to Norman feudalism. But the conquest of England was just one facet of the extraordinary expansion of...

I’m done with po-faced politicians

I’m done with po-faced politicians

Why can’t we go back to 1983?

By 10pm on the night of 9th June 1983 BBC Television centre was humming. In Studio Two, amid a beige version of the set from Alien, David Dimbleby and Robin Day were about to start the election results show, though everybody already knew Thatcher was going to walk it....