The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena, wrote the parson-naturalist Gilbert White: “…for besides the alarming meteors and tremendous thunder‐storms that affrighted and distressed the different counties of this...
Hidden in Plain Sight Michael Carter, a properties historian at English Heritage and the man who oversees, among others, the ruins of Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire, is troubled by the effect that Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy has had on the public imagination. The...
A Very Dickensian Christmas Christmas as we know it was largely defined by the Victorians: from the arrival of Christmas trees to the development of crackers and the sending of cards, most of our modern-day traditions date back to the mid-19th century. The royal...
As so often, the setting came first. The Great Fire of London raged for four days in September 1666, destroying most of the ancient walled City, including old St Paul’s, the medieval cathedral, and more than 13,000 houses. Seventy thousand people were made homeless,...
In July 1274 the Little Battle or Little War of Chalon took place on the Saone in Burgundy-Franche-Comté. This was a tournament that turned nasty when the host, the Count of Chalon, tried in vain to unhorse Edward I. The tourney at Chalon was a strange affair. Walter...
Almost a quarter of a century on from the publication of Antony Beevor’s groundbreaking and prize-winning Stalingrad, military history is still big business with books by Max Hastings, James Holland and my own SBS: Silent Warriors gracing the UK bestseller charts this...
When it comes to a battle, size does not always correlate with importance, nor is it necessarily won or lost entirely on the day itself. A small but significant action that may also have influenced another, later engagement occurred outside the town of Lemgo in 1638....
Gorbachev and the Chernobyl Disaster Whatever calculations Mikhail Gorbachev, his Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, and Soviet economists had made for the long term, the catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear plant wrecked everything. The explosion of one of its four...
TIPSY CAKE Based on Eliza Acton, 1845, Modern Cookery As a confirmed trifle-hater, I briefly considered putting a nice, savoury trifle in here, based on lobster in a fried bread cup. But honesty compels me to admit it is more of a croustade, and a cheat’s way out. If...
The Great Gatsby Immersive Show Be transported back to the roaring twenties. Some people in the audience wore masks, perhaps worried about the tail end of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919. Many of the costumes on display were as colourful as the lighting. The wit was...
