The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Within the pages of Women of SOE, there are many incredible stories reflecting every human trait from heroism to cowardice, bravery to fear, love to betrayal, loyalty to selfishness. The book's aim is to show these women (and the men they worked with) as human beings,...
In my new biography of Empress Matilda, I have emphasised Matilda’s capacity for collaboration with the men surrounding her, revealing her concomitant skill of persuasion and negotiation. Nevertheless, it is clear from her life story that there were moments that these...
When we think of the Crusades, the first things that come to mind are 12th-century characters such as Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, locked in combat for control of the Holy Land. The average medieval person, though, would have had a much richer understanding...
I was very interested to see Archduke, as I have spent years researching and writing about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The Royal Court warned me that the play was not entirely historically accurate. So it would be bad form to list all the historical...
55BC, as Sellar and Yeatman knew, is “the first date in English history”. Caesar led his legions across the sea and gave the Britons a thrashing. This, of course, was “a Good Thing, since the Britons were only natives at that time.” Caesar could hardly have put it any...
I’m frequently asked how much of my novel Sawadika American Girl is drawn from real life. A work of historical fiction, it is the story of a 17-year-old American woman coming-of-age in 1968 Thailand when the country served as a major US military outpost for America’s...
Summer Reads from Aspects of HistoryZeb Baker-Smith Editor at Aspects of HistoryPaul Knox’s Lost London offers a captivating itinerary of 25 buildings which are no longer, but whose lifespan shaped the capital’s architectural story, revealing how the perennial cycle...
I have been fascinated by the multi-cultural history of Sicily since I read Kingdom in the Sun by John Julius Norwich. When I first arrived in Sicily fifteen years ago, I was quite literally dazzled by a confusing and exotic mix of architectural styles, languages, and...
On 2nd March this year, an Iranian Shahed drone struck an aircraft hangar at RAF Akrotiri causing minor damage. The Iranian regime identified Akrotiri besides its sister RAF station Dhekelia and a host of other scattered facilities across the island, which are on...
The passing of time has a strange way in these parts. As the carnyces sound around site, WW2 jeeps swing by, Celts mingle with civil war militia, Neolithic outfits juxtaposed with band members of the much-loved ABBA tribute, you’d be forgiven for a certain amount of...
