The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
‘Iconic’ is a rather overused and clichéd word these days. It’s probably quite helpful, then, to unpack exactly what we mean when we use this term for the architecture of the past or present – or rather, what we ought to mean. Many new buildings in Britain’s towns and...
In 1783 (or in some accounts 1793), three men were allegedly playing cards in the Chequers Inn, Holbeach, and talking about a friend who had recently died and who used to make up a foursome with them. They hatched a plan that must have seemed like a bloody good one...
As the clock ticked down to D-Day the atmosphere in the central London office of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, reached feverish anticipation. Years of carefully calibrated deception, casting spells over the German generals defending the landing grounds...
Do the good guys always win? It would be nice to think that open, democratic societies are healthier and stronger and have inbuilt advantages over authoritarian regimes. After all, in World War Two the democracies led by Britain and the USA smashed totalitarian...
‘Rumour is always more terrifying when it concerns the deaths of the powerful’, wrote the Roman senator and historian Cornelius Tacitus in the early 2nd century CE. His statement can be equally applied to monarchs and potentates, both dynastic and elected, who, by...
When writing my second Alexander Baxby mystery Naming the Dead, I tried to imagine what life was like for ordinary people in the early seventeenth century. A murder-solving physician such as Baxby would have witnessed much suffering and death. Average life expectancy...
Who was Edith Tudor-Hart? For a long time, and especially after the revelation of her crucial role in the creation of modern Britain's most notorious spy ring – the Cambridge Five – she existed more as a cipher than as a real person. I first encountered her name well...
States have already pushed assassination even further to the fore since the publication of Death to Order: A Modern History of Assassination in the summer of 2025. However, if we look underneath the headlines, then the trends which had been well established for over a...
Lincolnshire has played a pivotal role in the history of England on more than one occasion with the Rising of 1536 being one such example which was itself a precursor to the larger Pilgrimage of Grace. Just over a century later, the county would again play an...
On 31st March 1875, Sergei Diaghilev was born into a wealthy Russian family. I salute the man who did so much to haul ballet into the 20th century. My historical novel, Dance of the Earth, spanning 1875 – 1921, is largely set in London. During this tumultuous era,...
