The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
It is more than thirty years since I first heard of a small group of German army officers rising up against Hitler in the dying days of the Nazi regime. I was a foreign correspondent sent to Berlin within days of the Wall being torn down, and had been tracking the...
A Fun Night at the Opera Their voices reached to the back of the auditorium - and probably into other theatres. One wonders if plastic cups are given out because glass might shatter. Opera Locos is a blast - full of sound and fast and furious comedy. It's a romp...
At the outbreak of the Second World War, the charismatic and hugely attractive Nancy Wake was an Australian living with her French businessman husband in Marseilles. Immediately, she plunged into resistance work which resulted in her having to flee from France,...
Earthquake at Antioch Six months following the devastating earthquake of February 6th 2023, the dust has finally settled across Southern Turkey and Northern Syria. Rescue efforts are over and the attention of the Turkish government and international aid community is...
Are we in a new Cold War? If not, how is it best to describe the struggle between China and Western democracies? Some have suggested “hot peace”— but such wordplay doesn’t get us far. In fact, as far as intelligence and national security are concerned, the West is...
In 1970, there were so many Soviet intelligence agents operating undercover in London that MI5 was hopelessly over-extended. The scale and extent of KGB espionage operations in the UK, threatening to overwhelm not just MI5 but the security of the state. It resulted...
Stalingrad: Researching the Lighthouse Stalingrad, the greatest battle of any theatre of conflict during the Second World War. That’s the story I had always been told growing up. As a nine-year-old boy in the mid-1970s, I was given as a birthday present a book of the...
The Emperor Vitellius was not a man of whom Roman historians have ever been proud. He was one of four emperors in 69 CE, the year after the death of Nero, and was famed mainly for eating massive helpings of seafood. Since his nasty death by a thousand cuts, slowly...
Migration & The End of Empire However you line up the different factors involved, there’s no doubt that immigration played a major role in the unravelling of the western half of the Roman imperial system. By the end of the fifth century AD, from Anglo-Saxons north...
T.E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, is one of the most intriguing individuals of the twentieth century, who remarkably had strong associations with buildings and places in London. At the beginning of the First World War between October to November 1914, he was...
