The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Hero City: Leningrad 1943–44 St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, St Petersburg. Peter the Great’s window on the world, the birthplace of the Bolshevik Revolution and of Vladimir Putin. It has always been seen as occupying a strategic position, although its geographic...
Founded by Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple was a cult with ideological radical political, religious and racial aims. In an attempt to create a socialist utopia, Jones established a remote agricultural project settlement in Guyana, known as Jonestown. Here, under Jones’...
Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale often features as a daring bit-part player in World War II espionage books, but now this extraordinary character takes centre stage in Tim Spicer’s insightful biography. Dunderdale was an iron fist in a velvet glove. He combined charm with...
In 1732 Thomas Fairfax, the sixth Lord Fairfax of Cameron, was reading the Gentleman’s Magazine obituary of the agent to his lands in Virginia, Robert Carter. To his astonishment he discovered Carter was worth, in those days, £10,000 and so Fairfax immediately began...
Between the Clouds and the River is Dave Mason’s latest historical fiction, with a dual timeline narrative set between 1942 and 1965. Spanning continents and decades, this book is a sweeping and moving tale of life, love, loss and everything in between. In 1942,...
Jack Bowsher has set out in this book – his first – to reprise the role of armour in the Burma campaign. He has achieved much more, however, as this excellent book is an accessible study of the campaign as a whole. It has much to recommend it. The fruit of lots of...
Nelson’s Pathfinders is essential reading for Naval Historians. It is prescient that it is being published a year after the Admiralty announced it will be withdrawing paper charts and notices to mariners from 2026. For anyone unfamiliar with an Admiralty Chart it is a...
The British Army ended the First World War well trained, well led, well equipped and capable of engaging in all arms intensive warfare. Of all the players, on both sides, this army was unquestionably the most capable of deployment against a first class enemy anywhere...
Too many books about Henry V fall into the tempting trap of weighting the material towards his kingship and the Agincourt campaign. But Dan Jones is too deft and diligent as a historian to fall into such a trap. Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England's Greatest...
Leaving Fatherland is journalist Matt Graydon’s debut novel and begins in Halbe, Germany during the inter-war period and is set against the rise of the Nazis. We are introduced to Oskar Bachmann, a shy schoolboy desperate to gain his father’s approval but often...
