The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Ian Fleming created the most famous fictional agent in the world, James Bond. However, when he worked for Naval Intelligence during WWII, he made significant contributions to the real world of intelligence. One of his most important contributions was the formation of...
Over the last six years, Aspects of History has brought you the best historical writing from established and new authors alike, whether non-fiction or fiction. So we are now excited to outline a new chapter for the Aspects of History Substack. Our website has grown...
When I first stumbled across the story of the Women's Timber Corps more than a decade ago, I was astonished that I had never heard of them. These young women had felled trees, driven timber lorries, worked in dangerous sawmills and helped keep Britain fighting during...
In August 1941, British and Russian forces invaded Iran and Reza Shah’s abdication was followed by his son Mohammad Reza’s succession. In the 37 years that separate the Allied invasion from the revolution of 1979, three distinct phases may be distinguished. 1941 to...
For Karl Marx, Napoleon III was a “grotesque mediocrity”; Victor Hugo lambasted him as “Napoleon the little”; Alexis de Tocqueville, in what was not the famed political theorist’s most sophisticated analysis, dismissed him as a “dwarf”. Yet these men underestimated...
Hitler believed in the Darwinian struggle for existence. Life did not, could not, exist without conflict. All too soon after his ascent into power, and initially, Europe got to experience the consequences of his grim and aggressive political beliefs. In Great Britain,...
If I had never been to Tibet, I might have found it difficult to understand the Tibetan riots that broke out in Lhasa in 2008. Nor would I have felt such a powerful urge to complete my novel, A Tibetan Girl Called Ata, a tragic cross-cultural love story that unfolds...
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...
