The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
When British troops arrived in Hamburg at the end of the war, they were shocked by the extent of the damage inflicted by Allied bombers in the summer of 1943. Many of them thought the Germans had had it even worse than London with the Blitz. As well as the...
Richmond and Molyneux Prizefighting began as a sport in Britain in 1719, when James Figg (1684–1734) became widely recognised as the first English bare-knuckle boxing champion. A cruel and unforgiving sport, a test of mental and physical endurance, fights would not...
Scotland had a profound impact on Winston Churchill – practically, politically and personally. Practically, it provided the young Liberal politician with a constituency for almost 15 years, five election victories and a platform from which he could launch his cabinet...
The 'miracle of Dunkirk' is lauded in British history and folklore as a victory of human endeavor, celebrated each year with a profusion of TV documentary veteran accounts and memorial services. German soldiers constantly referred to the wunder or miracle of reaching...
The Huxleys. I like to think of nineteenth-century biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and his twentieth-century zoologist grandson Julian as one very long-lived man. This Huxley lived from 1825–1975. Controversial exponent and explainer of evolution by natural selection,...
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was one of history’s greatest turning points, but it happened by accident. Everyone knows the story ends with the death of the Archduke and his wife, Sophie, putting into play the diplomatic crisis that led to the First...
Queens of the Wild comes with two intentions: to introduce general readers to some striking and often neglected superhuman female figures from medieval and early modern Europe, and to make an intervention in a major current scholarly debate. That debate concerns the...
George Washington - Commander-in-Chief As he entered Philadelphia on May 9, 1775, to attend the American colonies’ Second Continental Congress, Washington brought his Virginia militia uniform and six copies of the British Army’s standard drill manual to help him train...
In 1936, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra embarked on a controversial tour of Germany. On the morning of 10 November, the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham and members of the orchestra arrived at the Leipzig Gewandhaus to lay a wreath at the base of a statue of the...
On Wednesday 14th September, and again for the funeral, we saw the Queen’s Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards form the Bearer Party, in a highly emotive scene as the monarch was carried into Westminster Hall to lie in state, to the sound of Psalm 139 sung by the...
