The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
England’s First King In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (specifically the Winchester Manuscript, also known as version [A]), the entry for the year 925 [924] states: “Here, King Edward [The Elder] passed away, and Æthelstan, his son, succeeded to the kingdom.” Taken at face...
SAS South Georgia Boating Club began life as a war diary kept by me in a notebook during the Falklands War in 1982. Many years later, and with the encouragement of my grown-up son, this became the nucleus of an idea to write my life story with the war diary sandwiched...
Kill or cure? Consulting an Elizabethan physician could often be that much of a gamble. Almost everything sixteenth century doctors believed they knew was wrong. They had inherited a view of disease and the human body steeped in the writings of the Greek, Roman and...
HistFest is a festival, running for only two years seeking to offer history for all audiences, and who could complain about such an aspiration? Partnered and hosted by the British Library, it’s easy to get to, and the 2022 line up featured many fantastic subjects, not...
Sometimes in life when realization hits, making us aware that we don’t know exactly who we are or how we got there. For some, a life-changing event is the only window to a view of our world in a different light. This is where my story began. A person who had been a...
The world watched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with horror and disbelief. The siege of Mariupol, the shelling of Kharkiv, alleged war crimes in Bucha. A willingness to lay waste cities, destroy infrastructure and murder civilians. All presided over by a leader in...
It took little more than a single generation for the centuries-old Roman Empire to fall. In those critical decades, while Christians and pagans, legions and barbarians, generals and politicians squabbled over dwindling scraps of power, two men – former comrades on the...
I wish I could remember which German chancellor it was who said that the Russians’ idea of a secure frontier is one with Russian soldiers on both sides of it. The present war, and indeed all the sabre-rattling along the Russia’s frontier with the Baltic republics over...
John Rastell: Renaissance Man and Bookseller Around the year 1500 Wynkyn de Worde moved his printing press from the precinct of Westminster Abbey to premises in Fleet Street. De Worde was the Dutch assistant of William Caxton, who had introduced printing to England,...
It was 14 April 1912. Charles Joughin had finally fallen asleep after a hard day’s work in the ship’s kitchens. Suddenly, he was woken by a tremendous jolt. He felt the vessel shudder violently beneath him. Then, after a momentary pause, it continued moving forward....
