The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
On 21 April 1945, the last VC of the Second World War in Europe was won by Guardsman Charlton in an astonishing act of bravery. The Irish Guards had been ordered to harass Wehrmacht positions at the towns of Elsdorf and Wistedt in northwestern Germany, around 50 miles...
When discussing concentration camp Dora-Mittelbau in my latest book Along the Roads to Hell, I mentioned the Heeresversuchsanstalt (HVA) Peenemünde. Peenemünde is situated on the north-west corner of the German island Usedom in the Baltic Sea, close to the Polish...
Those of you who have read Blood Feud (book 1 of my Rebellion trilogy (though keep an eye out for book 2: Uprising which should be launched in early 2025)), will be aware of Agatho, Thegn Oslac’s Frankish champion-cum-bodyguard and most loyal and deadly of his...
I was first drawn to the Great Siege of Malta, as an academic exercise, by an interest in its many eyewitness sources. How do people caught up in historical events perceive, remember and record their experiences? On a more instinctive level, however, I was powerfully...
LBJ’s Flawed Plan When President Johnson weighed sending American troops, aircraft, and ships to Vietnam in 1965, Korea was foremost in his mind. The Korean War had sunk the Truman presidency, and President Eisenhower had ended that war only by threatening to use...
Who Tells the Story? In August 1999 Cornwall experienced a total eclipse of the sun on a cloudy day. Positioned along the south coast, BBC and other journalists reported the national disappointment. Locals and tourists on the north coast had a wonderful view,...
On the 13th November 1715, two battles took place concurrently on British soil. The first, at Sherrifmuir in Scotland, saw John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar, with a Jacobite army of 12,000 men engage with a far smaller government force under the 2nd Duke of Argyll. After...
The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World At seventeen thousand feet and halfway from India to China, pilot Joseph Dechene had lost both his aircraft’s engines to ice. His lumbering C-46 cargo plane was now a glider. With white, ice-laden clouds...
On a grey evening last autumn in the outer concourse of drab Euston Station, I took pity on two teachers and their assistants who were corralling a large group of school-children. I offered them a distraction. We moved across to one of the two statues – not that of...
She dropped her aitches but picked up every note, sparkled more than the gems on her gown - and was a pitch perfect blend of fierceness and fineness. Kirsty King, playing Eliza Doolittle, lit up the stage in a new adaptation of My Fair Lady at The Questors Theatre in...
